Cumberland County, in Illinois, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6b — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
These conditions suit cabbage, hazelnut, lavender, and collard greens — a starting list any specific site will trim or extend with its own soil, sun, and drainage.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Cumberland County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Cumberland 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 Cumberland County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Cumberland County — the short answer
Cumberland County, Illinois: USDA zone 6b, about 217 days between hard freezes, across 221K acres.
- USDA zone
- 6b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 31
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 3
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~217
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 221K 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 6b is Cumberland County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Cumberland County's 217-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Cumberland County
Across a year, Cumberland County accumulates about 3,631 growing degree days above 50°F, about 248 more than the middle Illinois county — ahead of 64 of Illinois’s 102 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 Cumberland County
Across Cumberland County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Wynoose, Bluford, and Cisne are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally poorly drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.2–6.6, slightly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C/D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Poorly drained
Prime farmland
16%
Hydric soils
43%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Cumberland County
The USDA soil survey maps 43% of Cumberland County as poorly drained — but another 56% drains differently: 30% somewhat poorly drained, 16% well drained.
Wynoose is the most extensive named soil at 19% of mapped acres, then Bluford (15%) and Cisne (9%).
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 Cumberland County
Each reading below is measured for Cumberland 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 Cumberland County are poorly drained, in hydrologic group C/D — ground that sheds water slowly.
Beds can stay saturated for days after heavy rain, and the roots of most vegetables, berries, and fruit trees suffocate or rot in soil that never drains.
Raised beds or mounded rows lift roots above the wet zone; choose water-tolerant crops for the lowest spots.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
MeasuredTopsoil across Cumberland County runs about pH 6.2–6.6, 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
MeasuredCumberland County runs about 217 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
MeasuredCumberland County sits in USDA hardiness zone 6b.
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 Cumberland County is in
Cumberland County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Interior River Valleys and Hills (92%) and Central Corn Belt Plains (8%). 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 Cumberland County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Cumberland County's own USDA zone 6b and its own 217-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 Illinois profile.
Is it too late to plant in Cumberland 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 Mar 3; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 31 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 3 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. There is slack in a calendar like this — late plantings, second rounds of favorites, and a fall bench that keeps beds working.
Documented around Cumberland County
- monarch butterfly97 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Cumberland County
USGS estimates 141,809 lb of Glyphosate on Cumberland County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Atrazine (65,920 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (55,812 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 Cumberland County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Cumberland County — 52 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 3 Superfund sites. 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 Cumberland 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 Cumberland County
Closest first, across Cumberland County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Casey's General Store #1671Underground Storage Tanks · 250 ft
- Grants Fertilizer SerUnderground Storage Tanks · 350 ft
- Gte NorthUnderground Storage Tanks · 450 ft
- IDOTBrownfields · 800 ft
- HPZ INCBrownfields · 1100 ft
- Cumberland County JailUnderground Storage Tanks · 1200 ft
- Nichols Oil CoUnderground Storage Tanks · 1300 ft
- PYROFERRIC INTERNATIONAL INCToxics Release Inventory · 1300 ft
- Toledo Service CenterUnderground Storage Tanks · 1300 ft
- Pyroferric International IncUnderground Storage Tanks · 1800 ft
- Effingham Clay Ser CoUnderground Storage Tanks · 1800 ft
- CLARK PROPERTYSuperfund · 2.0 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Cumberland 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 Cumberland County.
Sources Checked
across Cumberland County
Severity Distribution
across Cumberland County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Cumberland County, two things run higher than the national average across Cumberland County — Superfund (3 sites) and Underground Storage Tanks (34 sites). It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
Superfund: Superfund sites represent the most severe contamination in the federal system.
Underground Storage Tanks: Underground storage tanks are the single most common source of soil contamination near homes and gardens.
Commission professional soil testing before any food production (test for heavy metals, VOCs, and SVOCs).
Use raised beds with imported soil — this eliminates the primary soil-contact pathway.
Check your specific parcel in Cumberland 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 Cumberland County average
Your land is one point inside Cumberland County
Everything above resolves to Cumberland County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 221K 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 Cumberland County Average
Cumberland County Average
- ●USDA Zones 6b, averaged across Cumberland County
- ●One soil character for all of Cumberland County
- ●Frost dates read at Cumberland County's scale: Mar 31 to Nov 3
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Cumberland County's 6b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Cumberland County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Cumberland County, Illinois — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Cumberland County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Cumberland County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Cumberland County average
How we know this about Cumberland 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 Cumberland County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Cumberland County
When does frost risk typically end in Cumberland County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Cumberland County typically lands around Mar 31, 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 21.
How long is the growing season in Cumberland County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Cumberland County sees about 217 frost-free days — roughly Mar 31 through Nov 3, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 21 to Oct 20, about 182 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Cumberland County?
The federal record around Cumberland County is a meaningful one — 52 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (34), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record under a tenth of a mile 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 Cumberland County's scale — its 6b band and its 217-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Cumberland 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 Illinois's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Cumberland County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Cumberland County's own scale — its own ~217-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 52 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Cumberland County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Cumberland County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~217-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Cumberland CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 52 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record under a tenth of a mile outFederal environmental registers
- Cumberland County's boundary and the 221,405 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6b and a ~217-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Cumberland County spans, Interior River Valleys and Hills the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Cumberland County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Cumberland County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Illinois grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Illinois
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Cumberland County — the ~217 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 Cumberland County's 221,405 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 52 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 Cumberland Countyread your own land →