Ingham County, in Michigan, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6a — a range where zone-matched perennials and frost-aware annual timing set what succeeds.
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
Ingham County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Ingham 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 Ingham County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Ingham County — the short answer
Ingham County, Michigan: USDA zone 6a, about 187 days between hard freezes, across 356K acres.
- USDA zone
- 6a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 20
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 24
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~187
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 356K 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 Ingham County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Ingham County's 187-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Ingham County
Across a year, Ingham County accumulates about 2,373 growing degree days above 50°F, about 273 more than the middle Michigan county — ahead of 56 of Michigan’s 83 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 Ingham County
Across Ingham County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Conover, Marlette, and Colwood are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally somewhat poorly drained with a loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.1–6.5, slightly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C/D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Somewhat poorly drained
Prime farmland
18%
Hydric soils
32%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Ingham County
The USDA soil survey maps 29% of Ingham County as somewhat poorly drained — but another 65% drains differently: 29% well drained, 18% poorly drained.
Conover is the most extensive named soil at 17% of mapped acres, then Marlette (13%) and Colwood (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 Ingham County
Each reading below is measured for Ingham 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 Ingham County are somewhat poorly drained, in hydrologic group C/D — ground that sheds water slowly.
Beds can stay saturated for days after heavy rain, and the roots of most vegetables, berries, and fruit trees suffocate or rot in soil that never drains.
Raised beds or mounded rows lift roots above the wet zone; choose water-tolerant crops for the lowest spots.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
MeasuredTopsoil across Ingham County runs about pH 6.1–6.5, 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
MeasuredIngham County runs about 187 days between hard freezes — a moderate growing season.
There is room for the full run of cool-season crops plus a warm-season main crop, but the calendar is tight enough that a late spring or early fall frost still decides how much finishes.
Time warm-season transplants to your last hard freeze, and a few weeks of season extension turns a near-miss harvest into a sure one.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredIngham 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 Ingham County is in
Ingham County sits in the Southern Michigan/Northern Indiana Drift Plains — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Ingham County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Ingham County's own USDA zone 6a and its own 187-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 Michigan profile.
Is it too late to plant in Ingham County?
Rarely: the season closes in stages, not all at once, and each stage has its crops. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 23; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 20 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 24 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. As the window narrows, the plantings just get faster — fall brassicas, then greens, then garlic to finish.
Documented around Ingham County
Survey cells within 31 miles of Ingham County checked for spotted lanternfly, none carrying a detection — a surveyed negative, not an absence of looking. Nearest documented record 55 miles off. What to watch for.
- Japanese beetle27 documented records
- monarch butterfly149 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Ingham County
USGS estimates 108,537 lb of Glyphosate on Ingham County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Atrazine (38,140 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (23,555 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 Ingham County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Ingham County — 1,660 documented sites across 6 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 8 Superfund sites. Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Ingham County carries one of the heavier federal records we track — and that's not a verdict on your yard. Proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis: nothing here says any particular parcel is affected. It does earn one concrete step — before food beds go in the ground, a professional soil test tells you exactly what you're working with, and raised beds with clean imported soil grow well almost anywhere in the meantime.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Ingham County
Closest first, across Ingham County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- MI DEPT/TRANSPORATION BRIDGE (S09-33084)Brownfields · 1.7 mi
- RENE MELLINGERBrownfields · 1.7 mi
- Laustein Sawmill, IncUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- Green Acres Turf FarmUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.1 mi
- Sparrow Treatment CenterUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.1 mi
- MASON PUBLIC SCHOOLS - MIDDLE SCHOOLBrownfields · 3.1 mi
- MASON DENTAL GROUP PC DDSBrownfields · 3.2 mi
- CITY OF MASONBrownfields · 3.4 mi
- MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITYBrownfields · 3.5 mi
- Ingham County Eastern DistrictUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.5 mi
- Alaiedon Elementary SchoolUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.6 mi
- Mason Wildlife FacilityUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.6 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Ingham 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 Ingham County.
Sources Checked
across Ingham County
Severity Distribution
across Ingham County
Highest-Severity Sites
Know Before You Grow
- •Underground tanks leak petroleum as they age — near a former filling station, test the soil.
- •Near a brownfield, raised beds of imported soil give your food clean ground.
- •On a private well, test for nitrates: above 10 mg/L the water needs treatment before irrigating.
Check your specific parcel in Ingham 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 Ingham County average
Your land is one point inside Ingham County
Everything above resolves to Ingham County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 356K 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 Ingham County Average
Ingham County Average
- ●USDA Zones 6a, averaged across Ingham County
- ●One soil character for all of Ingham County
- ●Frost dates read at Ingham County's scale: Apr 20 to Oct 24
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Ingham County's 6a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Ingham County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Ingham County, Michigan — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Ingham County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Ingham County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Ingham County average
How we know this about Ingham 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 Ingham County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Ingham County
When does frost risk typically end in Ingham County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Ingham County typically lands around Apr 20, 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 May 11.
How long is the growing season in Ingham County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Ingham County sees about 187 frost-free days — roughly Apr 20 through Oct 24, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer May 11 to Oct 10, about 152 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Ingham County?
The federal record around Ingham County runs heavier than most — 1,660 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (800), the nearest Brownfields record about 1.7 miles out — so test the soil before planting food in the ground, and raised beds with clean imported soil grow well in the meantime. Even here, proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what's recorded and where.
Everything above is measured at Ingham County's scale — its 6a band and its 187-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Ingham 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 Michigan's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Ingham County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Ingham County's own scale — its own ~187-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 1,660 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Ingham County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Ingham County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~187-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Ingham CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 1,660 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Brownfields record about 1.7 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Ingham County's boundary and the 355,892 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6a and a ~187-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Ingham County sitting wholly inside the Southern Michigan/Northern Indiana Drift PlainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Ingham County for 2 tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Ingham County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Michigan grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Michigan
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Ingham County — the ~187 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 Ingham County's 355,892 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 1,660 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 Ingham Countyread your own land →