Dade County, in Missouri, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a — room for a real mix of vegetables, fruit, and perennials matched to the local frost calendar.
Reliable performers under these conditions include cabbage, hazelnut, california poppy, and collard greens; what your own ground favors still comes down to its soil, sun, and drainage.
Dade County lies within the Ozarks — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Dade County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Dade 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 Dade County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Dade County — the short answer
Dade County, Missouri: USDA zone 7a, about 224 days between hard freezes, across 314K acres.
- USDA zone
- 7a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 7
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~224
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 314K 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 7a is Dade County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Dade County's 224-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Dade County
Across a year, Dade County accumulates about 3,925 growing degree days above 50°F, about 172 more than the middle Missouri county — ahead of 91 of Missouri’s 115 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 Dade County
Across Dade County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Goss, Barden, and Cliquot are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.5–6.0, moderately acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
19%
Hydric soils
0%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Dade County
The USDA soil survey maps 51% of Dade County as well drained — but another 49% drains differently: 39% moderately well drained, 6% somewhat poorly drained.
Goss is the most extensive named soil at 24% of mapped acres, then Barden (12%) and Cliquot (8%).
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 Dade County
Each reading below is measured for Dade 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 Dade 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 Dade County runs about pH 5.5–6.0, 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
MeasuredDade County 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
MeasuredDade County 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 Dade County is in
Dade County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Ozark Highlands (90%) and Central Irregular Plains (10%). Which one your land falls in changes what grows wild there and how the ground behaves, and a county-wide answer cannot tell you which.
What Grows in Dade County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Dade County's own USDA zone 7a and its own 224-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 Missouri profile.
Is it too late to plant in Dade 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 Feb 28; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 28 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 7 — 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 Dade County
- monarch butterfly1 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Dade County
USGS estimates 85,131 lb of Glyphosate on Dade County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (20,775 lb) and 2,4-d (20,120 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 Dade County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Dade County — 78 documented sites across 7 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed). Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
There's a meaningful federal record across Dade County — worth a look before you plant food, not a reason to hold back from growing. Proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard. A soil test before new food beds is the sensible precaution here, and the map shows exactly which sites sit where, so you can see what's actually near you.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Dade County
Closest first, across Dade County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- GREENFIELD MAINT LOTUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
- GREENFIELD R-IV SCHOOLUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
- GREENFIELD TRADING POSTUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
- HOT SPOT #4Underground Storage Tanks · 1.2 mi
- EUTSLER OIL COUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.3 mi
- GREENFIELD CONOCOUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.4 mi
- K & M SERVICEUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.4 mi
- CITY OF GREENFIELDUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.4 mi
- T31N R26W 19BBD2Nitrate · 1.5 mi
- T31N R26W 19BBA1Nitrate · 1.5 mi
- T31N R26W 19BBD1Nitrate · 1.5 mi
- RICS CUSTOM & CLASSIC CARS LLCBrownfields · 1.6 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Dade 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 Dade County.
Severity Distribution
across Dade County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Dade County, two things run higher than the national average across Dade County — CAFO (3 sites) and Nitrate (38 sites). That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
CAFO: CAFOs pose a different contamination profile than chemical sources.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Wash all produce consumed raw thoroughly, especially leafy greens grown near CAFOs.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Check your specific parcel in Dade 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 Dade County average
Your land is one point inside Dade County
Everything above resolves to Dade County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 314K 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 Dade County Average
Dade County Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across Dade County
- ●One soil character for all of Dade County
- ●Frost dates read at Dade County's scale: Mar 28 to Nov 7
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Dade County's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Dade County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Dade County, Missouri — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Dade County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Dade County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Dade County average
How we know this about Dade 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 Dade County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Dade County
When does frost risk typically end in Dade County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Dade County typically lands around Mar 28, 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 18.
How long is the growing season in Dade County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Dade County sees about 224 frost-free days — roughly Mar 28 through Nov 7, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 18 to Oct 24, about 189 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Dade County?
The federal record around Dade County is a meaningful one — 78 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (38), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.6 miles out — so a soil test before new food beds is a sensible precaution here, not a reason to hold back from growing. Remember that proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what sits where.
Everything above is measured at Dade County's scale — its 7a band and its 224-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Dade 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 Missouri's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Dade County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Dade County's own scale — its own ~224-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 78 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Dade County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Dade County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~224-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Dade CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 78 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.6 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Dade County's boundary and the 313,606 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 2 ecoregions Dade County spans, Ozark Highlands the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Dade County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Dade County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Missouri grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Missouri
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Dade County — the ~224 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 Dade County's 313,606 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 78 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 Dade Countyread your own land →