Bracken County, in Kentucky, 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.
Bracken County lies within the Ohio River Valley — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Bracken County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Bracken 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 Bracken County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Bracken County — the short answer
Bracken County, Kentucky: USDA zone 6b, about 223 days between hard freezes, across 130K acres.
- USDA zone
- 6b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 1
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 10
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~223
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 130K 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 Bracken County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Bracken County's 223-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Bracken County
Across a year, Bracken County accumulates about 3,531 growing degree days above 50°F, about 129 fewer than the middle Kentucky county — ahead of 25 of Kentucky’s 120 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 Bracken County
Across Bracken County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Eden, Lowell, and Nicholson are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a flaggy silty clay loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.0, moderately acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
5%
Hydric soils
0%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Bracken County
The USDA soil survey maps 92% of Bracken County as well drained — but another 5% drains differently: 4% moderately well drained.
Eden is the most extensive named soil at 79% of mapped acres, then Lowell (10%) and Nicholson (4%).
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 Bracken County
Each reading below is measured for Bracken 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 Bracken 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 Bracken County runs about pH 6.0, 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
MeasuredBracken 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
MeasuredBracken 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 Bracken County is in
Bracken County sits in the Interior Plateau — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Bracken County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Bracken County's own USDA zone 6b 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 Kentucky profile.
Is it too late to plant in Bracken 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 4; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 1 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 10 — 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 Bracken County
Survey cells within 31 miles of Bracken County checked for spotted lanternfly, none carrying a detection — a surveyed negative, not an absence of looking. Nearest documented record 35 miles off. What to watch for.
What gets applied to farmland in Bracken County
USGS estimates 5,455 lb of Glyphosate on Bracken County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (1,847 lb) and Metolachlor-s (1,652 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 Bracken County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Bracken County — 71 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 1 Toxics Release Inventory facility. Active industrial facilities reporting chemical releases to air, water, and land.
The federal record across Bracken 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 Bracken County
Closest first, across Bracken County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- M D Hedgecocks GroceryUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.5 mi
- Powersville Mercantile LLCUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.8 mi
- Brooksville Farm SupplyUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.1 mi
- Chevron Mini MartUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.3 mi
- Willow Farm CenterUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.3 mi
- Todds Farm SupplyUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- Bracken Co Bd Of Ed Bus GarageUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- Stewarts Bracken Co Farm SupplyUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- Bracken Co Road DeptUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- Brooksville 1st StopUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
- Falmouth Bulk Plant 241Underground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
- Hays GroceryUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Bracken 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 Bracken County.
Total Sites
71
across Bracken County
Risk Level
Moderate
Highest-severity
1 Toxics Release Inventory facility
Sources Checked
across Bracken County
Severity Distribution
across Bracken County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Bracken County, Underground Storage Tanks runs higher than the national average — 57 sites across Bracken County. Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Underground Storage Tanks: Underground storage tanks are the single most common source of soil contamination near homes and gardens.
Use raised beds with imported soil — this eliminates the primary soil-contact pathway.
Check your specific parcel in Bracken 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 Bracken County average
Your land is one point inside Bracken County
Everything above resolves to Bracken County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 130K 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 Bracken County Average
Bracken County Average
- ●USDA Zones 6b, averaged across Bracken County
- ●One soil character for all of Bracken County
- ●Frost dates read at Bracken County's scale: Apr 1 to Nov 10
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Bracken County's 6b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Bracken County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Bracken County, Kentucky — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Bracken County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Bracken County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Bracken County average
How we know this about Bracken 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 Bracken County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Bracken County
When does frost risk typically end in Bracken County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Bracken County typically lands around Apr 1, 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 22.
How long is the growing season in Bracken County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Bracken County sees about 223 frost-free days — roughly Apr 1 through Nov 10, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 22 to Oct 27, about 188 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Bracken County?
The federal record around Bracken County shows 71 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (57), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.5 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 Bracken County's scale — its 6b band and its 223-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Bracken 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 Kentucky's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Bracken County’s own scale
8 of the readings below were taken at Bracken County's own scale — its own ~223-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 71 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Bracken County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Bracken 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 Bracken CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 71 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.5 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Bracken County's boundary and the 129,706 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6b and a ~223-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Bracken County sitting wholly inside the Interior PlateauUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Bracken County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Kentucky grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Kentucky
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Bracken 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 Bracken County's 129,706 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 71 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 Bracken Countyread your own land →