Meade County, in Kansas, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6b — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
A short list that earns its place here — cabbage, hazelnut, lavender, and collard greens — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Meade County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Meade 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 Meade County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Meade County — the short answer
Meade County, Kansas: USDA zone 6b, about 208 days between hard freezes, across 626K acres.
- USDA zone
- 6b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 6
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 31
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~208
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 626K 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 Meade County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Meade County's 208-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Meade County
Across a year, Meade County accumulates about 4,003 growing degree days above 50°F, about 170 more than the middle Kansas county — ahead of 79 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 Meade County
Across Meade County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Harney, Mansic, and Uly are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.7–7.8, neutral. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
46%
Hydric soils
2%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Meade County
The USDA soil survey maps 77% of Meade County as well drained — but another 23% drains differently: 11% somewhat excessively drained, 8% excessively drained.
Harney is the most extensive named soil at 30% of mapped acres, then Mansic (18%) and Uly (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 Meade County
Each reading below is measured for Meade 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 Meade County are well drained, in hydrologic group C — 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 Meade County runs about pH 6.7–7.8, 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
MeasuredMeade County runs about 208 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
MeasuredMeade 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 Meade County is in
Meade County spans 3 EPA Level III ecoregions — Southwestern Tablelands (44%), High Plains (40%) and Central Great Plains (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 Meade County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Meade County's own USDA zone 6b and its own 208-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 Meade County?
Usually not — gardeners here simply switch what goes in the ground as the season moves. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 9; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 6 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 31 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. Here the season winds down slowly: late sowings, a real autumn harvest, and garlic in the ground before the first hard freeze.
Documented around Meade County
- monarch butterfly56 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Meade County
USGS estimates 377,764 lb of Glyphosate on Meade County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Atrazine (172,416 lb) and Acetochlor (116,672 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 Meade County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Meade County — 256 documented sites across 4 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 10 concentrated animal feeding operations. Large-scale animal operations that can contaminate soil and groundwater with nitrates and pathogens.
There's a meaningful federal record across Meade 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 Meade County
Closest first, across Meade County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- 32S 28W 14DD 01Nitrate · 1.9 mi
- 32S 28W 14AC 01Nitrate · 2.0 mi
- SOUTHWEST GAS STORAGE COUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.2 mi
- 33S 28W 04AA 01Nitrate · 2.4 mi
- 32S 28W 13BB 01Nitrate · 2.5 mi
- MEADE MUNICIPAL AIRPORTUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.8 mi
- 32S 28W 11ACB 01Nitrate · 2.8 mi
- MEADE AUTO TRUCK PLAZAUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- CO-OP SERVICE COMPLEXUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- U-PUMP IT #209Underground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
- 32S 28W 11AB 01Nitrate · 3.0 mi
- REMPELS AUTO RPRBrownfields · 3.0 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Meade 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 Meade County.
Total Sites
256
across Meade County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
10 concentrated animal feeding operations
Sources Checked
across Meade County
Severity Distribution
across Meade County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Meade County, two things run higher than the national average across Meade County — CAFO (10 sites) and Nitrate (194 sites). That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
CAFO: CAFOs pose a different contamination profile than chemical sources.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Wash all produce consumed raw thoroughly, especially leafy greens grown near CAFOs.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Check your specific parcel in Meade 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 Meade County average
Your land is one point inside Meade County
Everything above resolves to Meade County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 626K 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 Meade County Average
Meade County Average
- ●USDA Zones 6b, averaged across Meade County
- ●One soil character for all of Meade County
- ●Frost dates read at Meade County's scale: Apr 6 to Oct 31
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Meade County's 6b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Meade County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Meade County, Kansas — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Meade County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Meade County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Meade County average
How we know this about Meade 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 Meade County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Meade County
When does frost risk typically end in Meade County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Meade County typically lands around Apr 6, 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 27.
How long is the growing season in Meade County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Meade County sees about 208 frost-free days — roughly Apr 6 through Oct 31, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 27 to Oct 17, about 173 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Meade County?
The federal record around Meade County is a meaningful one — 256 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (194), the nearest Nitrate record about 1.9 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 Meade County's scale — its 6b band and its 208-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Meade 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 Meade County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Meade County's own scale — its own ~208-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 256 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Meade County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Meade County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~208-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Meade CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 256 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Nitrate record about 1.9 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Meade County's boundary and the 625,972 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6b and a ~208-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 3 ecoregions Meade County spans, Southwestern Tablelands the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Meade County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Meade 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 Meade County — the ~208 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 Meade County's 625,972 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 256 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 Meade Countyread your own land →