Taylor County, in Iowa, sits in USDA hardiness zone 5b — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
These conditions suit cabbage, cranberry, 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
Taylor County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Taylor 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 Taylor County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Taylor County — the short answer
Taylor County, Iowa: USDA zone 5b, about 198 days between hard freezes, across 340K acres.
- USDA zone
- 5b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 23
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~198
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 340K 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 5b is Taylor County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Taylor County's 198-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Taylor County
Across a year, Taylor County accumulates about 3,009 growing degree days above 50°F, about 265 more than the middle Iowa county — ahead of 78 of Iowa’s 99 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 Taylor County
Across Taylor County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Nira, Sharpsburg, and Colo are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally somewhat poorly drained with a silty clay loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.2–6.5, slightly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Somewhat poorly drained
Prime farmland
13%
Hydric soils
20%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Taylor County
The USDA soil survey maps 32% of Taylor County as somewhat poorly drained — but another 67% drains differently: 29% moderately well drained, 23% poorly drained.
Nira is the most extensive named soil at 10% of mapped acres, then Sharpsburg (9%) and Colo (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 Taylor County
Each reading below is measured for Taylor 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 Taylor County are somewhat poorly drained, in hydrologic group C — 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 Taylor County runs about pH 6.2–6.5, 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
MeasuredTaylor County runs about 198 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
MeasuredTaylor County sits in USDA hardiness zone 5b.
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 Taylor County is in
Taylor County sits in the Western Corn Belt Plains — EPA Level III, inside the wider Great Plains. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Taylor County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Taylor County's own USDA zone 5b and its own 198-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 Iowa profile.
Is it too late to plant in Taylor County?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 11; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 8 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 23 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. The tail of the season still works: sixty-day crops into late summer, quick greens after, garlic last of all.
What gets applied to farmland in Taylor County
USGS estimates 160,947 lb of Glyphosate on Taylor County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Atrazine (58,234 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (56,585 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 Taylor County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Taylor County — 52 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 3 Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Active industrial facilities reporting chemical releases to air, water, and land.
The federal record across Taylor County is a modest one — a typical footprint for a growing area. Nothing here calls for alarm; it's worth knowing which recorded sites sit closest to where you grow, and each one on the map carries its type and location. If one turns out to be a near neighbor, a one-time soil test settles the question.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Taylor County
Closest first, across Taylor County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- 069N33W29CDA 04765 1952Taylor County HomeNitrate · 1.3 mi
- 069N34W27ACBC 1970Gravity 3Nitrate · 2.8 mi
- FORMER WALT''S SERVICEUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.8 mi
- 069N33W27ADDD 1971Conway 1Nitrate · 3.8 mi
- HAWHEE TRUCK REPAIR INCBrownfields · 4.3 mi
- BEDFORD COUNTRY STOREUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.4 mi
- BEEMER OIL COUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.4 mi
- BEDFORD COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICTUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.8 mi
- IOWA DEPT OF TRANSPORTATION MAINT GARAGEUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.8 mi
- ABANDONED GAS STATIONUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.9 mi
- TAYLOR COUNTY MOTOR CO INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.9 mi
- QUALITY AUTO & TRUCK REPAIRUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.9 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Taylor 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 Taylor County.
Total Sites
52
across Taylor County
Risk Level
Moderate
Highest-severity
3 Toxics Release Inventory facilities
Sources Checked
across Taylor County
Severity Distribution
across Taylor County
Highest-Severity Sites
Know Before You Grow
- •Underground tanks leak petroleum as they age — near a former filling station, test the soil.
- •On a private well, test for nitrates: above 10 mg/L the water needs treatment before irrigating.
- •Near a brownfield, raised beds of imported soil give your food clean ground.
Check your specific parcel in Taylor 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 Taylor County average
Your land is one point inside Taylor County
Everything above resolves to Taylor County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 340K 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 Taylor County Average
Taylor County Average
- ●USDA Zones 5b, averaged across Taylor County
- ●One soil character for all of Taylor County
- ●Frost dates read at Taylor County's scale: Apr 8 to Oct 23
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Taylor County's 5b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Taylor County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Taylor County, Iowa — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Taylor County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Taylor County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Taylor County average
How we know this about Taylor 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 Taylor County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Taylor County
When does frost risk typically end in Taylor County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Taylor County typically lands around Apr 8, 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 29.
How long is the growing season in Taylor County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Taylor County sees about 198 frost-free days — roughly Apr 8 through Oct 23, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 29 to Oct 9, about 163 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Taylor County?
The federal record around Taylor County shows 52 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (30), the nearest Nitrate record about 1.3 miles out — a typical footprint for a growing area, and proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard. It's worth seeing which recorded sites sit closest to where you grow, and testing the soil before new food beds near any of them.
Everything above is measured at Taylor County's scale — its 5b band and its 198-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Taylor 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 Iowa's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Taylor County’s own scale
8 of the readings below were taken at Taylor County's own scale — its own ~198-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
- Taylor County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 5bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Taylor County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~198-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Taylor CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 52 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Nitrate record about 1.3 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Taylor County's boundary and the 340,417 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 5b and a ~198-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Taylor County sitting wholly inside the Western Corn Belt PlainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Taylor County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Iowa grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Iowa
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Taylor County — the ~198 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 Taylor County's 340,417 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 Taylor Countyread your own land →