Cowley County, in Kansas, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
On paper, cabbage, hazelnut, california poppy, and collard greens all suit these conditions — on the ground, soil, sun, and drainage make the final call.
Cowley County lies within the Flint Hills — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Cowley County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Cowley 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 Cowley County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Cowley County — the short answer
Cowley County, Kansas: USDA zone 7a, about 223 days between hard freezes, across 720K acres.
- USDA zone
- 7a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 30
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~223
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 720K 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 7a is Cowley County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Cowley County's 223-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Cowley County
Across a year, Cowley County accumulates about 4,179 growing degree days above 50°F, about 346 more than the middle Kansas county — ahead of 97 of Kansas’s 105 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 Cowley County
Across Cowley County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Sogn, Labette, and Martin are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silty clay loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.1–7.0, slightly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
52%
Hydric soils
0%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Cowley County
The USDA soil survey maps 62% of Cowley County as well drained — but another 37% drains differently: 29% moderately well drained, 7% somewhat excessively drained.
Sogn is the most extensive named soil at 13% of mapped acres, then Labette (13%) and Martin (11%).
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 Cowley County
Each reading below is measured for Cowley 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 Cowley County are well drained, in hydrologic group D — 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 Cowley County runs about pH 6.1–7.0, 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
MeasuredCowley County runs about 223 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
MeasuredCowley County sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a.
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 Cowley County is in
Cowley County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Flint Hills (74%) and Central Great Plains (26%). 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 Cowley County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Cowley County's own USDA zone 7a and its own 223-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 Kansas profile.
Is it too late to plant in Cowley 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 2; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 30 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 8 — 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 Cowley County
- monarch butterfly442 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Cowley County
USGS estimates 162,772 lb of Glyphosate on Cowley County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Acephate (92,075 lb) and 2,4-d (39,870 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 Cowley County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Cowley County — 414 documented sites across 6 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 Cowley 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 Cowley County
Closest first, across Cowley County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- 32S 05E 24CBC 01Nitrate · 1.0 mi
- 32S 05E 23BD 01Nitrate · 1.6 mi
- 32S 05E 23BD 02Nitrate · 1.6 mi
- MCCONNELL TITAN II -8Superfund · 2.1 mi
- LUMBERTS AUTO SALVAGE & RPRBrownfields · 2.4 mi
- 32S 05E 04AAA 01Nitrate · 5.2 mi
- RUBBERMAIDBrownfields · 6.0 mi
- MEADWESTVACO CALMAR INC.Brownfields · 6.4 mi
- CCI FLUID KINETICSBrownfields · 6.4 mi
- 33S 06E 01ACC 01Nitrate · 6.5 mi
- NEWELL RUBBERMAIDToxics Release Inventory · 6.5 mi
- NEWELL RUBBERMAIDBrownfields · 6.5 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Cowley 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 Cowley County.
Sources Checked
across Cowley County
Severity Distribution
across Cowley County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Cowley County, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 192 sites across Cowley County. It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around 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 Cowley 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 Cowley County average
Your land is one point inside Cowley County
Everything above resolves to Cowley County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 720K 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 Cowley County Average
Cowley County Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across Cowley County
- ●One soil character for all of Cowley County
- ●Frost dates read at Cowley County's scale: Mar 30 to Nov 8
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Cowley County's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Cowley County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Cowley County, Kansas — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Cowley County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Cowley County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Cowley County average
How we know this about Cowley 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 Cowley County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Cowley County
When does frost risk typically end in Cowley County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Cowley County typically lands around Mar 30, 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 20.
How long is the growing season in Cowley County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Cowley County sees about 223 frost-free days — roughly Mar 30 through Nov 8, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 20 to Oct 25, about 188 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Cowley County?
The federal record around Cowley County is a meaningful one — 414 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (192), the nearest Nitrate record about 1.0 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 Cowley County's scale — its 7a band and its 223-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Cowley 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 Kansas's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Cowley County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Cowley County's own scale — its own ~223-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 414 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Cowley County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Cowley County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~223-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Cowley CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 414 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Nitrate record about 1.0 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Cowley County's boundary and the 720,472 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7a and a ~223-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Cowley County spans, Flint Hills the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Cowley County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Cowley County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Kansas grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Kansas
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Cowley County — the ~223 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 Cowley County's 720,472 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 414 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 Cowley Countyread your own land →