El Paso County, in Colorado, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6a — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
Reliable performers under these conditions include cabbage, blackberry, california poppy, and collard greens; what your own ground favors still comes down to its soil, sun, and drainage.
El Paso County lies within the Front Range — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
El Paso County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across El Paso 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 El Paso County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
El Paso County — the short answer
El Paso County, Colorado: USDA zone 6a, about 169 days between hard freezes, across 1.4M acres.
- USDA zone
- 6a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 27
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 13
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~169
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 1.4M 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 6a is El Paso County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against El Paso County's 169-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in El Paso County
Across a year, El Paso County accumulates about 2,083 growing degree days above 50°F, about 251 more than the middle Colorado county — ahead of 35 of Colorado’s 64 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.
Grounded in PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University — 1991–2020 monthly normals
Soil in El Paso County
Across El Paso County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Bresser, Truckton, and Blakeland are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a sandy loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.8–7.0, neutral. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group B soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Hydric soils
1%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across El Paso County
The USDA soil survey maps 65% of El Paso County as well drained — but another 33% drains differently: 24% somewhat excessively drained, 8% excessively drained.
Bresser is the most extensive named soil at 14% of mapped acres, then Truckton (9%) and Blakeland (6%).
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 El Paso County
Each reading below is measured for El Paso 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 El Paso County are well drained, in hydrologic group B — 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 El Paso County runs about pH 6.8–7.0, close to neutral.
This is the range most vegetables prefer — one correction you probably do not have to make, which is genuinely good news for a new bed.
Keep it there with compost rather than lime or sulfur, and only amend if your own soil test says otherwise.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Season length
MeasuredEl Paso County runs about 169 days between hard freezes — a moderate growing season.
There is room for the full run of cool-season crops plus a warm-season main crop, but the calendar is tight enough that a late spring or early fall frost still decides how much finishes.
Time warm-season transplants to your last hard freeze, and a few weeks of season extension turns a near-miss harvest into a sure one.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredEl Paso County sits in USDA hardiness zone 6a.
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 El Paso County is in
El Paso County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Southwestern Tablelands (84%) and Southern Rockies (16%). 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 El Paso County
We scored all 1,086 plants against El Paso County's own USDA zone 6a and its own 169-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 Colorado profile.
Is it too late to plant in El Paso County?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 30; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 27 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 13 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. Even past midsummer there is room for a true fall garden here, and garlic planted near the close carries the momentum into next year.
Documented around El Paso County
- Japanese beetle6 documented records
- monarch butterfly49 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in El Paso County
USGS estimates 19,829 lb of Glyphosate on El Paso County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of 2,4-d (10,670 lb) and Dicamba (2,915 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 El Paso County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across El Paso County — 2,420 documented sites across 7 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 15 Superfund sites (none NPL-listed). Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
El Paso 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 El Paso County
Closest first, across El Paso County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- SCHRIEVER AFB - 50 CESBrownfields · 1.5 mi
- SHRIEVER AFS TRANSFORMER STORAGE AREASuperfund · 1.6 mi
- SC01406401CAB1Nitrate · 2.2 mi
- SC01406402AAANitrate · 2.5 mi
- COLORADO SPRINGS LANDFILLBrownfields · 2.6 mi
- Corral Bluffs Microwave SiteUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.3 mi
- Jims Tool Rental And ForkliftUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.0 mi
- SC01306427AAD ARAPMAS13Nitrate · 4.3 mi
- SC01406512DAD LFHMAS07Nitrate · 4.6 mi
- SC01306422CDANitrate · 4.7 mi
- Mci TelecommunicationsUnderground Storage Tanks · 5.6 mi
- SC01306334BBDNitrate · 5.8 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from El Paso 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 El Paso County.
Total Sites
2,420
across El Paso County
Risk Level
High
Highest-severity
15 Superfund sites (none NPL-listed)
Sources Checked
across El Paso County
Severity Distribution
across El Paso County
Highest-Severity Sites
Know Before You Grow
- •Underground tanks leak petroleum as they age — near a former filling station, test the soil.
- •Near a brownfield, raised beds of imported soil give your food clean ground.
- •On a private well, test for nitrates: above 10 mg/L the water needs treatment before irrigating.
Check your specific parcel in El Paso 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 El Paso County average
Your land is one point inside El Paso County
Everything above resolves to El Paso County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 1.4M 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 El Paso County Average
El Paso County Average
- ●USDA Zones 6a, averaged across El Paso County
- ●One soil character for all of El Paso County
- ●Frost dates read at El Paso County's scale: Apr 27 to Oct 13
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not El Paso County's 6a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in El Paso County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in El Paso County, Colorado — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that El Paso County averages can't show:
We read public map data around El Paso County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the El Paso County average
How we know this about El Paso 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 El Paso County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about El Paso County
When does frost risk typically end in El Paso County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in El Paso County typically lands around Apr 27, 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 May 18.
How long is the growing season in El Paso County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, El Paso County sees about 169 frost-free days — roughly Apr 27 through Oct 13, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer May 18 to Sep 29, about 134 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in El Paso County?
The federal record around El Paso County runs heavier than most — 2,420 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (1,057), the nearest Brownfields record about 1.5 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 El Paso County's scale — its 6a band and its 169-day season. Your yard writes its own version of El Paso 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 Colorado's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at El Paso County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at El Paso County's own scale — its own ~169-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 2,420 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- El Paso County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6aUSDA PHZM 2023
- El Paso County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~169-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in El Paso CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 2,420 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Brownfields record about 1.5 miles outFederal environmental registers
- El Paso County's boundary and the 1,360,910 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6a and a ~169-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions El Paso County spans, Southwestern Tablelands the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in El Paso County for 2 tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto El Paso County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Colorado grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Colorado
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across El Paso County — the ~169 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 El Paso County's 1,360,910 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 2,420 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 El Paso Countyread your own land →