St. Clair County, in Missouri, sits in USDA hardiness zone 6b — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
A short list that earns its place here — cabbage, hazelnut, lavender, and collard greens — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
St. Clair 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
St. Clair County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across St. Clair 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 St. Clair County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
St. Clair County — the short answer
St. Clair County, Missouri: USDA zone 6b, about 227 days between hard freezes, across 432K acres.
- USDA zone
- 6b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 26
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~227
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 432K 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 6b is St. Clair County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against St. Clair County's 227-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in St. Clair County
Across a year, St. Clair County accumulates about 3,977 growing degree days above 50°F, about 224 more than the middle Missouri county — ahead of 96 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 St. Clair County
Across St. Clair County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Goss, Barden, and Hector are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.6–6.2, moderately acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
20%
Hydric soils
4%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across St. Clair County
The USDA soil survey maps 54% of St. Clair County as well drained — but another 46% drains differently: 25% moderately well drained, 10% somewhat excessively drained.
Goss is the most extensive named soil at 15% of mapped acres, then Barden (12%) and Hector (10%).
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 St. Clair County
Each reading below is measured for St. Clair 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 St. Clair 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 St. Clair County runs about pH 5.6–6.2, 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
MeasuredSt. Clair County runs about 227 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. Clair County sits in USDA hardiness zone 6b.
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. Clair County is in
St. Clair County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Ozark Highlands (56%) and Central Irregular Plains (44%). 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 St. Clair County
We scored all 1,086 plants against St. Clair County's own USDA zone 6b and its own 227-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 St. Clair County?
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 Feb 26; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 26 (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. 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. Clair County
- Japanese beetle1 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in St. Clair County
USGS estimates 46,631 lb of Glyphosate on St. Clair County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (21,062 lb) and Atrazine (19,980 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 St. Clair County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across St. Clair County — 58 documented sites across 4 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 1 mining site. Historic and active mines that may leach heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and cadmium.
The federal record across St. Clair County is a modest one — a typical footprint for a growing area. Nothing here calls for alarm; it's worth knowing which recorded sites sit closest to where you grow, and each one on the map carries its type and location. If one turns out to be a near neighbor, a one-time soil test settles the question.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near St. Clair County
Closest first, across St. Clair County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- CITY HALLUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.9 mi
- R.D. HARPERUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.0 mi
- NATIONAL CONTROL DEVICES LLCBrownfields · 4.0 mi
- LITTLE BILLS AUTO SERVICEUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.0 mi
- OSCEOLA CLINICUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.1 mi
- T38N R25W 20BDD1Nitrate · 4.2 mi
- JELKS OSCEOLA MARINAUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.3 mi
- OSAGE MERCANTILE COMPANYUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.3 mi
- CASEYS GENERAL STORE #3283Underground Storage Tanks · 4.7 mi
- OSCEOLA STANDARDUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.7 mi
- WHITEMAN AFB GOLF-8Underground Storage Tanks · 4.7 mi
- SUGARFOOT CONVENIENCE STOREUnderground Storage Tanks · 5.0 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from St. Clair 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 St. Clair County.
Sources Checked
across St. Clair County
Severity Distribution
across St. Clair County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around St. Clair County, two things run higher than the national average across St. Clair County — Nitrate (16 sites) and Underground Storage Tanks (38 sites). It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Underground Storage Tanks: Underground storage tanks are the single most common source of soil contamination near homes and gardens.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Use raised beds with imported soil — this eliminates the primary soil-contact pathway.
Check your specific parcel in St. Clair 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 St. Clair County average
Your land is one point inside St. Clair County
Everything above resolves to St. Clair County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 432K 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 St. Clair County Average
St. Clair County Average
- ●USDA Zones 6b, averaged across St. Clair County
- ●One soil character for all of St. Clair County
- ●Frost dates read at St. Clair County's scale: Mar 26 to Nov 8
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not St. Clair County's 6b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in St. Clair County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in St. Clair County, Missouri — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that St. Clair County averages can't show:
We read public map data around St. Clair County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the St. Clair County average
How we know this about St. Clair 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 St. Clair County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about St. Clair County
When does frost risk typically end in St. Clair County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in St. Clair County typically lands around Mar 26, 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 16.
How long is the growing season in St. Clair County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, St. Clair County sees about 227 frost-free days — roughly Mar 26 through Nov 8, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 16 to Oct 25, about 192 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in St. Clair County?
The federal record around St. Clair County shows 58 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (38), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 3.9 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.
Everything above is measured at St. Clair County's scale — its 6b band and its 227-day season. Your yard writes its own version of St. Clair 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 St. Clair County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at St. Clair County's own scale — its own ~227-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 58 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- St. Clair County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 6bUSDA PHZM 2023
- St. Clair County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~227-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in St. Clair CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 58 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 3.9 miles outFederal environmental registers
- St. Clair County's boundary and the 431,988 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 6b and a ~227-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions St. Clair County spans, Ozark Highlands the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in St. Clair County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto St. Clair 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 St. Clair County — the ~227 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 St. Clair County's 431,988 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 58 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 St. Clair Countyread your own land →