Howard County, in Arkansas, sits in USDA hardiness zone 8a — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
These conditions suit cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens — a starting list any specific site will trim or extend with its own soil, sun, and drainage.
Howard County lies within the Ouachita Mountains — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Howard County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Howard 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 Howard County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Howard County — the short answer
Howard County, Arkansas: USDA zone 8a, about 241 days between hard freezes, across 376K acres.
- USDA zone
- 8a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 19
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 15
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~241
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 376K 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 8a is Howard County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Howard County's 241-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Howard County
Across a year, Howard County accumulates about 4,943 growing degree days above 50°F, about 137 more than the middle Arkansas county — ahead of 43 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 1,599 hours below 45°F, 181 fewer 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 Howard County
Across Howard County, the ground is predominantly Ultisols, where Sherwood, Pickens, and Sacul are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a fine sandy loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.3, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Ultisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
10%
Hydric soils
6%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Howard County
The USDA soil survey maps 59% of Howard County as well drained — but another 39% drains differently: 20% moderately well drained, 10% somewhat excessively drained.
Sherwood is the most extensive named soil at 25% of mapped acres, then Pickens (12%) and Sacul (10%).
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 Howard County
Each reading below is measured for Howard 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 Howard County are well drained, in hydrologic group C — 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 Howard County runs about pH 5.3, 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
MeasuredHoward County runs about 241 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
MeasuredHoward County sits in USDA hardiness zone 8a.
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 Howard County is in
Howard County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — South Central Plains (55%) and Ouachita Mountains (45%). 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 Howard County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Howard County's own USDA zone 8a and its own 241-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 Howard County?
Usually not — gardeners here simply switch what goes in the ground as the season moves. Cool-season crops can go in from around Feb 19; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 19 (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.
Documented around Howard County
- monarch butterfly1 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Howard County
USGS estimates 32,974 lb of 2,4-d on Howard County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Dicamba (1,218 lb) and Triclopyr (635 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 Howard County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Howard County — 263 documented sites across 8 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed). Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
There's a meaningful federal record across Howard County — worth a look before you plant food, not a reason to hold back from growing. Proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard. A soil test before new food beds is the sensible precaution here, and the map shows exactly which sites sit where, so you can see what's actually near you.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Howard County
Closest first, across Howard County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- SW ARKANSAS TRACTORUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
- WEYERHAEUSER NR COMPANY-DIERKS MILLToxics Release Inventory · 2.3 mi
- WEYERHAEUSER NR COMPANY-DIERKS MILLBrownfields · 2.3 mi
- UMPIRE FORESTRY DISTRICT OFCUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.8 mi
- DIERKS PORTABLE READY MIXToxics Release Inventory · 2.8 mi
- CHARLES MOORE LOGGINGUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.8 mi
- EZ MART #4450Underground Storage Tanks · 2.8 mi
- CANNON PROPERTYUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- DIERKS SCHOOL DISTRICT #2Underground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- DIERKS EXCESS #2Underground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- QUICK TRACKSUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- JR FOOD MARTUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Howard 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 Howard County.
Total Sites
263
across Howard County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed)
Severity Distribution
across Howard County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Howard County, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 128 sites across Howard County. Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Check your specific parcel in Howard 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 Howard County average
Your land is one point inside Howard County
Everything above resolves to Howard County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 376K 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 Howard County Average
Howard County Average
- ●USDA Zones 8a, averaged across Howard County
- ●One soil character for all of Howard County
- ●Frost dates read at Howard County's scale: Mar 19 to Nov 15
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Howard County's 8a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Howard County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Howard County, Arkansas — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Howard County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Howard County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Howard County average
How we know this about Howard 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 Howard County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Howard County
When does frost risk typically end in Howard County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Howard County typically lands around Mar 19, 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 9.
How long is the growing season in Howard County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Howard County sees about 241 frost-free days — roughly Mar 19 through Nov 15, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 9 to Nov 1, about 206 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Howard County?
The federal record around Howard County is a meaningful one — 263 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (128), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.6 miles out — so a soil test before new food beds is a sensible precaution here, not a reason to hold back from growing. Remember that proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what sits where.
Everything above is measured at Howard County's scale — its 8a band and its 241-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Howard 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 Howard County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Howard County's own scale — its own ~241-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 263 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Howard County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Howard County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~241-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Howard CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 263 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.6 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Howard County's boundary and the 375,892 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8a and a ~241-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Howard County spans, South Central Plains the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Howard County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Howard 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 Howard County — the ~241 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 Howard County's 375,892 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 263 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 Howard Countyread your own land →