Pippa Passes, Kentucky, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a — a range where zone-matched perennials and frost-aware annual timing set what succeeds.
The conditions favor cabbage, hazelnut, california poppy, and collard greens, among others — though every individual site edits that list with its own soil, sun, and drainage.
Even in Pippa Passes, no two yards are alike.
A low spot, a south-facing slope, or a stand of trees moves the frost date and sun across a single Pippa Passes lot. 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 Pippa Passes — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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Pippa Passes — the short answer
Pippa Passes, Kentucky: USDA zone 7a, about 224 days between hard freezes, across 285 acres of city.
- USDA zone
- 7a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 29
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~224
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- City area
- 285 acres
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
Every figure names the dataset it came from. Hard-freeze dates are this town’s own 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 Pippa Passes's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Pippa Passes's 224-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in Pippa Passes
Each reading below is measured for Pippa Passes itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredPippa Passes runs about 224 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
MeasuredPippa Passes 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 Pippa Passes is in
Pippa Passes sits in the Central Appalachians — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. That is read at Pippa Passes's own centroid rather than borrowed from Knott County.
What Grows in Pippa Passes
Every plant below cleared Pippa Passes's own zone 7a and its 224-day season. Each card opens that plant's Kentucky profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in Pippa Passes?
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 1; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 29 (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 Pippa Passes
Survey cells within 31 miles of Pippa Passes checked for spotted lanternfly, none carrying a detection — a surveyed negative, not an absence of looking. Nearest documented record 63 miles off. What to watch for.
What's on the federal record near Pippa Passes
Closest first, within ~10 miles of Pippa Passes. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Donna Kay Jacobs PropertyUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
- Slones Convenient MartUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
- Jerrys Restaurant & Dairy BarUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- E & G Construction & Rookies E & G MartUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- Caney 1 StopUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.0 mi
- Slones Service StationUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.1 mi
- Garner Quick StopUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.3 mi
- Kings Service StationUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.3 mi
- Namon MartinUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.7 mi
- Slones AshlandUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.7 mi
- M & L MarketUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.9 mi
- Perkins Service StationUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.9 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Pippa Passes'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 Pippa Passes.
Total Sites
167
within ~10 miles of Pippa Passes
Risk Level
Moderate
Highest-severity
1 Toxics Release Inventory facility
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of Pippa Passes
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of Pippa Passes
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Pippa Passes, Underground Storage Tanks runs higher than the national average — 122 sites within ~10 miles of Pippa Passes. That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
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 Pippa Passes
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 Pippa Passes average
Your land is one point inside Pippa Passes
Everything above resolves to Pippa Passes as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 285 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 city 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 local average.
Your Lot vs the Pippa Passes Average
Pippa Passes Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across Pippa Passes
- ●One soil character for all of Pippa Passes
- ●Frost dates read at Pippa Passes's scale: Mar 29 to Nov 8
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Pippa Passes's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in Pippa Passes
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Pippa Passes, Kentucky — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Pippa Passes averages can't show:
We read public map data around Pippa Passes — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Pippa Passes average
How we know this about Pippa Passes
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, read at this city’s own centroid; hard-freeze dates from NOAA 1991–2020 28°F normals at Pippa Passes’s own record; boundaries and acreage from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination records from the federal sources named in their beats above. Soil is not read at city grain anywhere on this page — there is no city-resolution survey in our data, which is why you will find no soil grid here rather than a statewide one wearing a local label. The resolution ledger below names every figure this page inherited.
Common questions about Pippa Passes
When does frost risk typically end in Pippa Passes?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Pippa Passes typically lands around Mar 29, 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 19.
When is the first frost in Pippa Passes?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in Pippa Passes typically arrives around Nov 8, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Oct 25, so the watching starts about Oct 9 — about 224 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in Pippa Passes?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Pippa Passes sees about 224 frost-free days — roughly Mar 29 through Nov 8, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 19 to Oct 25, about 189 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Pippa Passes?
The federal record around Pippa Passes shows 167 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (122), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.6 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.
How do I protect my plants from frost in Pippa Passes?
From about Oct 9 the job here turns from planting to protecting — the last start even a 30-day crop can finish. As the season closes around the first 28°F hard freeze near Nov 8 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals), three moves buy time: row cover or an old sheet over tender plants on still, clear nights; water the soil the afternoon before a freeze, so it holds warmth overnight; and harvest tomatoes, peppers and basil before Nov 8. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at Pippa Passes's scale — its 7a band and its 224-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Pippa Passes's numbers: we read soil, sun, drainage and frost at your exact address. Try it for 14 days — no card required.
What this page reads at Pippa Passes’s own scale
7 of the readings below were taken at Pippa Passes's own scale — its own ~224-day season between 28°F freezes, the 285 acres it covers and 167 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Pippa Passes's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Pippa Passes's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Mar 29 and Nov 8 and the ~224-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 167 documented contamination sites on the federal record near Pippa Passes, the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.6 miles out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- Pippa Passes's boundary and the 285 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7a and a ~224-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at Pippa Passes's own centroid, the Central AppalachiansUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Lanternfly survey cells around Pippa Passes checked, none carrying a detectionlydemapr (De Bona & Helmus), 10 km survey lattice
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so Pippa Passes's 285 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Knott County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Knott County
- The growing challenges every Kentucky grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Kentucky
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Knott County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Pippa Passes's 285 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of Pippa Passes you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 285 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.6 miles out, measured from the town centrehow we read the record →
- Where cold air settles, which slopes face the sun, and which way the wind runs on your own ground — measured at your address, and averaged away by any Pippa Passes-wide figureread your own land →
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