St. Mary, Kentucky, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a — a band that supports both cool-season staples and warm-season crops chosen to fit the local frost window.
Crops well matched to these conditions include cabbage, hazelnut, california poppy, and collard greens — though what thrives on any one site still turns on its specific soil, sun, and drainage.
Even in St. Mary, 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 St. Mary 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 St. Mary — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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St. Mary — the short answer
St. Mary, Kentucky: USDA zone 7a, about 218 days between hard freezes, across 498 acres of city.
- USDA zone
- 7a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 1
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 5
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~218
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- City area
- 498 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 St. Mary's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against St. Mary's 218-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in St. Mary
Each reading below is measured for St. Mary itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredSt. Mary runs about 218 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
MeasuredSt. Mary 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 St. Mary is in
St. Mary sits in the Interior Plateau — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. That is read at St. Mary's own centroid rather than borrowed from Marion County.
What Grows in St. Mary
Every plant below cleared St. Mary's own zone 7a and its 218-day season. Each card opens that plant's Kentucky profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in St. Mary?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. 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 5 — 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 St. Mary
Survey cells within 31 miles of St. Mary checked for spotted lanternfly, none carrying a detection — a surveyed negative, not an absence of looking. Nearest documented record 83 miles off. What to watch for.
What's on the federal record near St. Mary
Closest first, within ~10 miles of St. Mary. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Elders General StoreUnderground Storage Tanks · 1400 ft
- Livers Property No 2Underground Storage Tanks · 1500 ft
- Livers Property No 1Underground Storage Tanks · 1500 ft
- Loretto VideoUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- All Seasons Minit MartUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.7 mi
- Whistlin Pig General StoreUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.0 mi
- Settles GroceryUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.0 mi
- MORRIS PACKAGING LLCBrownfields · 4.1 mi
- Murphy USA #7454Underground Storage Tanks · 4.1 mi
- Lester Farmer ShopUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.1 mi
- Saint Joe GroceryUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.1 mi
- Pepsi Cola Bottling CoUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.3 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from St. Mary'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 St. Mary.
Total Sites
118
within ~10 miles of St. Mary
Risk Level
Moderate
Highest-severity
13 Toxics Release Inventory facilities
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of St. Mary
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of St. Mary
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around St. Mary, two things run higher than the national average within ~10 miles of St. Mary — Toxics Release Inventory (13 sites) and Underground Storage Tanks (92 sites). Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Toxics Release Inventory: TRI facilities report annual chemical releases to air, water, and land.
Underground Storage Tanks: Underground storage tanks are the single most common source of soil contamination near homes and gardens.
Check prevailing wind direction — downwind parcels face higher exposure than upwind or crosswind locations.
Use raised beds with imported soil — this eliminates the primary soil-contact pathway.
Check your specific parcel in St. Mary
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 St. Mary average
Your land is one point inside St. Mary
Everything above resolves to St. Mary as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 498 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 St. Mary Average
St. Mary Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across St. Mary
- ●One soil character for all of St. Mary
- ●Frost dates read at St. Mary's scale: Apr 1 to Nov 5
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not St. Mary's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in St. Mary
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in St. Mary, Kentucky — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that St. Mary averages can't show:
We read public map data around St. Mary — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the St. Mary average
How we know this about St. Mary
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 St. Mary’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 St. Mary
When does frost risk typically end in St. Mary?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in St. Mary 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.
When is the first frost in St. Mary?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in St. Mary typically arrives around Nov 5, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Oct 22, so the watching starts about Oct 6 — about 218 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in St. Mary?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, St. Mary sees about 218 frost-free days — roughly Apr 1 through Nov 5, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 22 to Oct 22, about 183 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in St. Mary?
The federal record around St. Mary shows 118 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (92), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.3 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 St. Mary?
From about Oct 6 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 5 (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 5. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at St. Mary's scale — its 7a band and its 218-day season. Your yard writes its own version of St. Mary'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 St. Mary’s own scale
7 of the readings below were taken at St. Mary's own scale — its own ~218-day season between 28°F freezes, the 498 acres it covers and 118 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- St. Mary's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- St. Mary's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Apr 1 and Nov 5 and the ~218-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 118 documented contamination sites on the federal record near St. Mary, the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.3 miles out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- St. Mary's boundary and the 498 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7a and a ~218-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at St. Mary's own centroid, the Interior PlateauUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Lanternfly survey cells around St. Mary 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 St. Mary's 498 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Marion County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Marion 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 Marion County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among St. Mary's 498 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of St. Mary you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 498 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.3 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 St. Mary-wide figureread your own land →
More in Kentucky
Wider growing context
What grows across KentuckySt. Mary sits outside our named growing regions, so Kentucky as a whole is its closest context here.
Nearby growing guides