Republic County, in Kansas, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6a — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
Crops well matched to these conditions include cabbage, hazelnut, lavender, and collard greens — though what thrives on any one site still turns on its specific soil, sun, and drainage.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Republic County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Republic 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 Republic County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Republic County — the short answer
Republic County, Kansas: USDA zone 6a, about 200 days between hard freezes, across 459K acres.
- USDA zone
- 6a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 25
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~200
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 459K 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 6a is Republic County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Republic County's 200-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Republic County
Across a year, Republic County accumulates about 3,487 growing degree days above 50°F, about 346 fewer than the middle Kansas county — ahead of 17 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 Republic County
Across Republic County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Crete, Hastings, and Hobbs are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.7–6.1, moderately acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
44%
Hydric soils
0%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Republic County
The USDA soil survey maps 54% of Republic County as well drained — but another 45% drains differently: 37% moderately well drained, 6% somewhat excessively drained.
Crete is the most extensive named soil at 26% of mapped acres, then Hastings (14%) and Hobbs (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 Republic County
Each reading below is measured for Republic 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 Republic 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 Republic County runs about pH 5.7–6.1, 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
Season length
MeasuredRepublic County runs about 200 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
MeasuredRepublic County sits in USDA hardiness zone 6a.
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 Republic County is in
Republic County sits in the Central Great Plains — EPA Level III, inside the wider Great Plains. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Republic County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Republic County's own USDA zone 6a and its own 200-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 Republic County?
For most of the year, no — what changes is which crops still fit the days remaining. 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 25 — 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 Republic County
- monarch butterfly2 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Republic County
USGS estimates 297,043 lb of Glyphosate on Republic County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Acephate (119,176 lb) and Dicamba (84,256 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 Republic County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Republic County — 183 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 2 Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Active industrial facilities reporting chemical releases to air, water, and land.
The federal record across Republic 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 Republic County
Closest first, across Republic County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- MID AMERICA TRUCKBrownfields · 0.7 mi
- LOVE'S TRAVEL STOP #647Underground Storage Tanks · 0.7 mi
- SHOP QWIKUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.7 mi
- MELTON MOTOR CO INCBrownfields · 0.8 mi
- ROLLING HILLS ELECTRIC COOP.,Underground Storage Tanks · 0.9 mi
- REPUBLIC CO HWY DEPTBrownfields · 0.9 mi
- KANSAS DEPT OF TRANSPORTATIONUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- REPUBLIC CO. HIGHWAY DEPT.Underground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- PRECISION DYNAMICS MIDWESTBrownfields · 1.0 mi
- JENSEN OIL & GAS CO., INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- BELLEVILLE, CITY OFUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- REPUBLIC COUNTY HOSPITALBrownfields · 1.0 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Republic 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 Republic County.
Total Sites
183
across Republic County
Risk Level
Moderate
Highest-severity
2 Toxics Release Inventory facilities
Sources Checked
across Republic County
Severity Distribution
across Republic County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Republic County, two things run higher than the national average across Republic County — Nitrate (130 sites) and CAFO (3 sites). 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.
CAFO: CAFOs pose a different contamination profile than chemical sources.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Wash all produce consumed raw thoroughly, especially leafy greens grown near CAFOs.
Check your specific parcel in Republic 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 Republic County average
Your land is one point inside Republic County
Everything above resolves to Republic County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 459K 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 Republic County Average
Republic County Average
- ●USDA Zones 6a, averaged across Republic County
- ●One soil character for all of Republic County
- ●Frost dates read at Republic County's scale: Apr 8 to Oct 25
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Republic County's 6a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Republic County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Republic County, Kansas — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Republic County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Republic County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Republic County average
How we know this about Republic 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 Republic County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Republic County
When does frost risk typically end in Republic County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Republic 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 Republic County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Republic County sees about 200 frost-free days — roughly Apr 8 through Oct 25, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 29 to Oct 11, about 165 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Republic County?
The federal record around Republic County shows 183 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (130), the nearest Brownfields record about 0.7 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 Republic County's scale — its 6a band and its 200-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Republic 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 Republic County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Republic County's own scale — its own ~200-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 183 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Republic County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Republic County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~200-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Republic CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 183 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Brownfields record about 0.7 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Republic County's boundary and the 459,121 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6a and a ~200-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Republic County sitting wholly inside the Central Great PlainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Republic County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Republic 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 Republic County — the ~200 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 Republic County's 459,121 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 183 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 Republic Countyread your own land →