Jasper County, in Missouri, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7a — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
Among the crops suited to this profile: cabbage, hazelnut, california poppy, and collard greens. The site-level story — soil, sun, drainage — decides the rest.
Jasper 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
Jasper County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Jasper 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 Jasper County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Jasper County — the short answer
Jasper County, Missouri: USDA zone 7a, about 224 days between hard freezes, across 409K 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
- 409K 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 Jasper County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Jasper County's 224-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Jasper County
Across a year, Jasper County accumulates about 4,113 growing degree days above 50°F, about 360 more than the middle Missouri county — ahead of 103 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.
Winter banks about 2,469 hours below 45°F. Chill is what tells a fruit tree its dormancy is over, and it is set by climate rather than by anything you can build.
Grounded in PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University — 1991–2020 monthly normals
Soil in Jasper County
Across Jasper County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Maplegrove, Eldorado, and Rueter are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.8–6.4, slightly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group B soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
55%
Hydric soils
2%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Jasper County
The USDA soil survey maps 41% of Jasper County as well drained — but another 57% drains differently: 35% moderately well drained, 12% somewhat excessively drained.
Maplegrove is the most extensive named soil at 21% of mapped acres, then Eldorado (13%) and Rueter (12%).
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 Jasper County
Each reading below is measured for Jasper 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 Jasper County are well drained, in hydrologic group B — 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 Jasper County runs about pH 5.8–6.4, 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
MeasuredJasper 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
MeasuredJasper 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 Jasper County is in
Jasper County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Ozark Highlands (91%) and Central Irregular Plains (9%). 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 Jasper County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Jasper 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 Jasper County?
Usually not — gardeners here simply switch what goes in the ground as the season moves. 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. There is slack in a calendar like this — late plantings, second rounds of favorites, and a fall bench that keeps beds working.
Documented around Jasper County
- Japanese beetle3 documented records
- monarch butterfly15 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Jasper County
USGS estimates 155,904 lb of Glyphosate on Jasper County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (37,760 lb) and Atrazine (30,676 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 Jasper County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Jasper County — 2,541 documented sites across 8 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 6 Superfund sites. Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Jasper 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 Jasper County
Closest first, across Jasper County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- LEGGETT & PLATT INCBrownfields · 2400 ft
- FLEX-O-LATORSToxics Release Inventory · 2400 ft
- Shepherd MineMining · 2500 ft
- BLEVINS ASPHALT CONSTRUCTION CO INCToxics Release Inventory · 2500 ft
- Unknown - Zn & PbMining · 0.5 mi
- T29N R31W 32BCB1Nitrate · 0.8 mi
- VC MISSOURI HOLDINGS LLC-CARTHAGE CRUSHED LIMESTONEToxics Release Inventory · 1.2 mi
- VALLEY SANITATION SERVICE INCBrownfields · 1.7 mi
- UNION PACIFICUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.8 mi
- MOONEY COMMERCIAL PROPERTYUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.9 mi
- Myers & Jemmison MineMining · 1.9 mi
- T28N R31W 04BAD1Nitrate · 1.9 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Jasper 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 Jasper County.
Severity Distribution
across Jasper County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Jasper County, Mining runs higher than the national average — 1,832 sites across Jasper County. That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
Mining: Mining sites — both historic and active — can leach heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury) into soil and water for centuries after operations cease.
Test soil for heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury) — this is essential near any mining site.
Check your specific parcel in Jasper 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 Jasper County average
Your land is one point inside Jasper County
Everything above resolves to Jasper County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 409K 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 Jasper County Average
Jasper County Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across Jasper County
- ●One soil character for all of Jasper County
- ●Frost dates read at Jasper County's scale: Mar 28 to Nov 7
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Jasper County's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Jasper County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Jasper County, Missouri — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Jasper County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Jasper County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Jasper County average
How we know this about Jasper 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 Jasper County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Jasper County
When does frost risk typically end in Jasper County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Jasper 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 Jasper County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Jasper 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 Jasper County?
The federal record around Jasper County runs heavier than most — 2,541 documented sites, mostly Mining entries (1,832), the nearest Brownfields record about 0.4 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 Jasper County's scale — its 7a band and its 224-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Jasper 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 Jasper County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Jasper County's own scale — its own ~224-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 2,541 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Jasper County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Jasper 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 Jasper CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 2,541 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Brownfields record about 0.4 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Jasper County's boundary and the 408,644 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 Jasper County spans, Ozark Highlands the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Jasper County for 2 tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Jasper 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 Jasper 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 Jasper County's 408,644 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 2,541 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 Jasper Countyread your own land →