Screven County, in Georgia, sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b — a range where zone-matched perennials and frost-aware annual timing set what succeeds.
A short list that earns its place here — cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
Screven County lies within the Vidalia / South Georgia — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Screven County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Screven 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 Screven County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Screven County — the short answer
Screven County, Georgia: USDA zone 8b, about 282 days between hard freezes, across 413K acres.
- USDA zone
- 8b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 23
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 2
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~282
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 413K 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 8b is Screven County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Screven County's 282-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Screven County
Across a year, Screven County accumulates about 5,680 growing degree days above 50°F, about 265 more than the middle Georgia county — ahead of 97 of Georgia’s 159 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 959 hours below 45°F, 177 fewer than the Georgia middle of 1,136. 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 Screven County
Across Screven County, the ground is predominantly Ultisols, where Dothan, Fuquay, and Blanton are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a loamy sand surface. Topsoil pH runs about 4.8–5.3, very strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group B soils.
Soil order
Ultisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
29%
Hydric soils
33%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Screven County
The USDA soil survey maps 45% of Screven County as well drained — but another 54% drains differently: 31% poorly drained, 9% somewhat excessively drained.
Dothan is the most extensive named soil at 13% of mapped acres, then Fuquay (12%) and Blanton (8%).
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 Screven County
Each reading below is measured for Screven 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 Screven 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 Screven County runs about pH 4.8–5.3, 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
Wet ground
MeasuredAbout 33% of Screven County is mapped as hydric — wetland — soil.
If your lot falls in one of those pockets, a standard in-ground bed will fight waterlogging all season, and roots that need air will struggle.
Check how your own ground drains before you dig; raised beds or moisture-loving plantings turn a wet corner from a problem into a niche.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Season length
MeasuredScreven County runs about 282 days between hard freezes — close to year-round growing.
Frost is rarely the limit here; winter plantings are as real as summer ones, and the harder question is which crops shrug off the summer heat.
Grow cool-season crops through the mild winter, and choose heat-tolerant varieties for the summer beds.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
The kind of country Screven County is in
Screven County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Southeastern Plains (84%) and Southern Coastal Plain (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 Screven County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Screven County's own USDA zone 8b and its own 282-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 Georgia profile.
Is it too late to plant in Screven County?
Too late for some crops, right on time for others — a growing season is a sequence, not a deadline. Cool-season crops can go in from around Jan 26; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 23 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 2 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. In a climate this gentle, “too late” hardly applies — the question becomes which crops prefer the cooler months ahead.
Documented around Screven County
- monarch butterfly4 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Screven County
USGS estimates 55,482 lb of Glyphosate on Screven County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Fluometuron (37,548 lb) and Dicamba (24,036 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 Screven County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Screven County — 117 documented sites across 6 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 2 Superfund sites (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 Screven 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 Screven County
Closest first, across Screven County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- GARY MINI MARTUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.9 mi
- IN & OUTUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.9 mi
- TRANE TECHNOLOGIES CO LLC SYLVANIA PLANT (FKA INGERSOLL) HSI 10016Toxics Release Inventory · 0.9 mi
- TRANE TECHNOLOGIES CO LLC SYLVANIA PLANT (FKA INGERSOLL) HSI 10016Brownfields · 0.9 mi
- ALLTEL/SOUTHERN REGIONUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- SYLVANIAPFAS · 1.0 mi
- SYLVANIAUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- DAVID W REED COMPANYUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- RUSTYS ONE STOPUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- GA DOT #10233 SCREVEN CO MAINT HUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
- EL CHEAPO #55Underground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
- SCOTT CAR CAREUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Screven 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 Screven County.
Total Sites
117
across Screven County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
2 Superfund sites (none NPL-listed)
Sources Checked
across Screven County
Severity Distribution
across Screven County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Screven County, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 38 sites across Screven County. That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
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 Screven 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 Screven County average
Your land is one point inside Screven County
Everything above resolves to Screven County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 413K 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 Screven County Average
Screven County Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Screven County
- ●One soil character for all of Screven County
- ●Frost dates read at Screven County's scale: Feb 23 to Dec 2
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Screven County's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Screven County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Screven County, Georgia — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Screven County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Screven County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Screven County average
How we know this about Screven 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 Screven County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Screven County
When does frost risk typically end in Screven County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Screven County typically lands around Feb 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 Mar 16.
How long is the growing season in Screven County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Screven County sees about 282 frost-free days — roughly Feb 23 through Dec 2, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 16 to Nov 18, about 247 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Screven County?
The federal record around Screven County is a meaningful one — 117 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (67), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.9 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 Screven County's scale — its 8b band and its 282-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Screven 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 Georgia's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Screven County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Screven County's own scale — its own ~282-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 117 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Screven County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Screven County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~282-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Screven CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 117 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.9 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Screven County's boundary and the 413,325 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~282-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Screven County spans, Southeastern Plains the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Screven County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Screven County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Georgia grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Georgia
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Screven County — the ~282 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 Screven County's 413,325 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 117 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 Screven Countyread your own land →