Boone County, in Arkansas, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
Among the crops suited to this profile: cabbage, prickly pear, california poppy, and collard greens. The site-level story — soil, sun, drainage — decides the rest.
Boone County lies within the Ozarks — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Boone County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Boone County, so your frost dates and drainage aren't the county average. Enter your address and we'll score 1,086 plants against your land's actual soil, sun, and frost.
We read public map data around Boone County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Boone County — the short answer
Boone County, Arkansas: USDA zone 7b, about 237 days between hard freezes, across 377K acres.
- USDA zone
- 7b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 23
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 15
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~237
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 377K acres
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
Every figure names the dataset it came from. Hard-freeze dates are county 28°F normals: light frosts run a few weeks past them, and tender transplants usually wait 2–3 weeks after the last hard freeze.
Hardiness Zone Range
Zone 7b is Boone County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Boone County's 237-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Boone County
Across a year, Boone County accumulates about 4,116 growing degree days above 50°F, about 690 fewer than the middle Arkansas county — ahead of 5 of Arkansas’s 75 counties. Degree days are the heat a crop actually gets to work with — more of them is more room to ripen a long-season crop before the freeze closes the window.
Winter banks about 2,165 hours below 45°F, 385 more than the Arkansas middle of 1,780. Chill is what tells a fruit tree its dormancy is over, and it is set by climate rather than by anything you can build.
Grounded in PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University — 1991–2020 monthly normals
Soil in Boone County
Across Boone County, the ground is predominantly Ultisols, where Noark, Nixa, and Arkana are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a very gravelly silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 4.8–5.8, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Ultisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
3%
Hydric soils
0%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Boone County
The USDA soil survey maps 65% of Boone County as well drained — but another 35% drains differently: 20% moderately well drained, 12% somewhat excessively drained.
Noark is the most extensive named soil at 17% of mapped acres, then Nixa (16%) and Arkana (14%).
Which of them your own lot sits on is a parcel question, not a county one. Check your address for the survey at your boundary.
What this means for growing in Boone County
Each reading below is measured for Boone County itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Drainage
MeasuredThe dominant soils across Boone County are well drained, in hydrologic group D — ground that drains quickly.
The upside is soil you can work early in spring and roots that never drown; the cost is that fast-draining ground dries out fast and leaches nutrients away before plants can use them.
Work in compost and mulch to hold moisture and feed, and water more often in short doses than deep and rarely.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
MeasuredTopsoil across Boone County runs about pH 4.8–5.8, on the acidic side.
Blueberries, potatoes, and rhododendrons thrive in it, but most vegetables start locking out nutrients below about pH 6.0 and grow pale and stunted no matter how much you feed them.
A measured lime application raises pH for the crops that need it — but test first, because the right rate depends on your own soil, not the county average.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Season length
MeasuredBoone County runs about 237 days between hard freezes — a long growing season.
There is slack for succession plantings and slow-finishing crops: many vegetables can be sown twice, and the heat-lovers have time to ripen fully.
Plan a second sowing of quick crops after the first comes out, and use the fall window most gardeners let sit idle.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredBoone County sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b.
The zone sets which perennials, shrubs, and fruit trees live through an average winter here — a plant rated for a colder zone is a safe bet, one rated warmer needs winter protection or gets treated as an annual.
Match perennials and fruit to the zone before you buy, so nothing you plant is a gamble against the cold.
USDA PHZM 2023
The kind of country Boone County is in
Boone County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Ozark Highlands (93%) and Boston Mountains (7%). Which one your land falls in changes what grows wild there and how the ground behaves, and a county-wide answer cannot tell you which.
What Grows in Boone County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Boone County's own USDA zone 7b and its own 237-day season between hard freezes, using the same matching engine that runs a full parcel report. These cleared both. Sun, soil pH and drainage vary lot by lot — those are the parcel questions below. Each card opens that plant's Arkansas profile.
Is it too late to plant in Boone County?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. Cool-season crops can go in from around Feb 23; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 23 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 15 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. A long window like this one runs successions deep into fall — and even its last weeks take quick greens and garlic.
What gets applied to farmland in Boone County
USGS estimates 19,908 lb of 2,4-d on Boone County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Glyphosate (5,148 lb) and Triclopyr (1,680 lb).
Farmland across the whole county, not any one lot. Check your address for the site-by-site record.
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across Boone County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Boone County — 323 documented sites across 7 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 1 Superfund site. Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Boone County carries one of the heavier federal records we track — and that's not a verdict on your yard. Proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis: nothing here says any particular parcel is affected. It does earn one concrete step — before food beds go in the ground, a professional soil test tells you exactly what you're working with, and raised beds with clean imported soil grow well almost anywhere in the meantime.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Boone County
Closest first, across Boone County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Hook Farm ProspectMining · 1.4 mi
- FAMILY COUNTRY STOREUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.9 mi
- VILINES LOCK & KEYUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.7 mi
- BILL'S ONE STOP [ERNIE HUNTER]Underground Storage Tanks · 3.2 mi
- THE STOREUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.2 mi
- NORTH 7 EXXONUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.2 mi
- MARSHALL'S TEXACO & GROCERYUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.5 mi
- 19N19W30DAA1Nitrate · 3.5 mi
- DSI TRUCK REPAIRUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.7 mi
- BERGMAN ONE STOPUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.7 mi
- Bailey OutcropsMining · 3.7 mi
- EVAGE, LLPBrownfields · 3.7 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Boone County's center, not your beds. Run your own address for what's upwind of you specifically.
Environmental Intelligence
The counts behind that headline — every source type on the record near Boone County.
Sources Checked
across Boone County
Severity Distribution
across Boone County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Boone County, Mining runs higher than the national average — 64 sites across Boone County. It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
Mining: Mining sites — both historic and active — can leach heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury) into soil and water for centuries after operations cease.
Test soil for heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury) — this is essential near any mining site.
Check your specific parcel in Boone County
Get exact proximity distances to contamination sources for your specific parcel — plus soil, sun, drainage, and 1,086 plant recommendations.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Boone County average
Your land is one point inside Boone County
Everything above resolves to Boone County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 377K acres. Your parcel is one point inside that footprint. Slope, tree cover, a low spot that pools cold air, and what is in the soil are all resolved at the address, and none of them are visible at county scale. That is the honest boundary of this page, and the reason the next step is a reading of your own ground rather than a better county average.
Your Lot vs the Boone County Average
Boone County Average
- ●USDA Zones 7b, averaged across Boone County
- ●One soil character for all of Boone County
- ●Frost dates read at Boone County's scale: Mar 23 to Nov 15
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Boone County's 7b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Boone County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Boone County, Arkansas — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Boone County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Boone County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Boone County average
How we know this about Boone County
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, read at county grain; hard-freeze dates from NOAA 1991–2020 28°F normals at this county’s own record where one resolves, and the labelled statewide window where none does; soils from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, area-weighted across the county’s own map units; boundaries and acreage from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination and pesticide records from the federal sources named in their beats above. Where Boone County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Boone County
When does frost risk typically end in Boone County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Boone County typically lands around Mar 23, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — earlier than the light-frost dates most charts quote. That marks the hard freeze, not the last light frost — lighter frosts keep biting past it, which is why tender transplants here wait until about Apr 13.
How long is the growing season in Boone County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Boone County sees about 237 frost-free days — roughly Mar 23 through Nov 15, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 13 to Nov 1, about 202 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Boone County?
The federal record around Boone County runs heavier than most — 323 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (153), the nearest Mining record about 1.4 miles out — so test the soil before planting food in the ground, and raised beds with clean imported soil grow well in the meantime. Even here, proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what's recorded and where.
Everything above is measured at Boone County's scale — its 7b band and its 237-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Boone County's numbers: we read soil, sun, drainage and frost at your exact address. Try it for 14 days — no card required.
Will It Grow Here?
Zone fit is the first question — each answer below reads Arkansas's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Boone County’s own scale
8 of the readings below were taken at Boone County's own scale — its own ~237-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 323 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Boone County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Boone County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~237-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Boone CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 323 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Mining record about 1.4 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Boone County's boundary and the 377,422 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7b and a ~237-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Boone County spans, Ozark Highlands the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Boone County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Arkansas grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Arkansas
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Boone County — the ~237 days above is one reading at its centre; the 12 towns below each carry their owntowns in this county →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Boone County's 377,422 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 323 documented sites actually reaches your soil — that needs your address, the wind, and the groundwater directionhow we read the record →
- Where cold air settles, which slopes face the sun, and which way the wind runs on your own ground — none of it survives being averaged over Boone Countyread your own land →