Shoal Creek Drive, 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.
Growers here do well with cabbage, hazelnut, california poppy, and collard greens — with the usual caveat that any single yard's soil, sun, and drainage cast the deciding vote.
Even in Shoal Creek Drive, 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 Shoal Creek Drive 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 Shoal Creek Drive — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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Shoal Creek Drive — the short answer
Shoal Creek Drive, Missouri: USDA zone 7a, about 227 days between hard freezes, across 300 acres of town.
- USDA zone
- 7a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 26
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Days between freezes
- ~227
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F — this town
- Town area
- 300 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 Shoal Creek Drive's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Shoal Creek Drive's 227-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Soil varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
What this means for growing in Shoal Creek Drive
Each reading below is measured for Shoal Creek Drive itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Season length
MeasuredShoal Creek Drive 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
MeasuredShoal Creek Drive 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 Shoal Creek Drive is in
Shoal Creek Drive sits in the Ozark Highlands — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. That is read at Shoal Creek Drive's own centroid rather than borrowed from Newton County.
What Grows in Shoal Creek Drive
Every plant below cleared Shoal Creek Drive's own zone 7a and its 227-day season. Each card opens that plant's Missouri profile. How we score.
Is it too late to plant in Shoal Creek Drive?
Rarely: the season closes in stages, not all at once, and each stage has its crops. 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. A long window like this one runs successions deep into fall — and even its last weeks take quick greens and garlic.
What's on the federal record near Shoal Creek Drive
Closest first, within ~10 miles of Shoal Creek Drive. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Unknown - Zn/PbMining · 200 ft
- TED HOOKERUnderground Storage Tanks · 550 ft
- GALE WEBB TRANSPORTATIONBrownfields · 2100 ft
- GO #702Underground Storage Tanks · 2600 ft
- CYCLE CONNECTION PIT STOP, INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 2600 ft
- WALGREENS #15730Brownfields · 0.5 mi
- SNAK ATAK #25Underground Storage Tanks · 0.5 mi
- SEASIDE POOLS INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
- MESSENGER PUBLISHING HOUSEBrownfields · 0.6 mi
- MERCY HEALTH JOPLINUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.9 mi
- Ruby MinesMining · 1.0 mi
- FREEMAN HEALTH SYSTEMSUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.1 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Shoal Creek Drive'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 Shoal Creek Drive.
Total Sites
2,609
within ~10 miles of Shoal Creek Drive
Risk Level
High
Highest-severity
7 Superfund sites
Sources Checked
within ~10 miles of Shoal Creek Drive
Severity Distribution
within ~10 miles of Shoal Creek Drive
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Shoal Creek Drive, Mining runs higher than the national average — 1,988 sites within ~10 miles of Shoal Creek Drive. 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 Shoal Creek Drive
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 Shoal Creek Drive average
Your land is one point inside Shoal Creek Drive
Everything above resolves to Shoal Creek Drive as a whole — one PHZM band and one 28°F frost record, read across 300 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 town 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 Shoal Creek Drive Average
Shoal Creek Drive Average
- ●USDA Zones 7a, averaged across Shoal Creek Drive
- ●One soil character for all of Shoal Creek Drive
- ●Frost dates read at Shoal Creek Drive's scale: Mar 26 to Nov 8
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Shoal Creek Drive's 7a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your specific parcel in Shoal Creek Drive
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Shoal Creek Drive, Missouri — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Shoal Creek Drive averages can't show:
We read public map data around Shoal Creek Drive — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Shoal Creek Drive average
How we know this about Shoal Creek Drive
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, read at this town’s own centroid; hard-freeze dates from NOAA 1991–2020 28°F normals at Shoal Creek Drive’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 town grain anywhere on this page — there is no town-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 Shoal Creek Drive
When does frost risk typically end in Shoal Creek Drive?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Shoal Creek Drive 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.
When is the first frost in Shoal Creek Drive?
The first hard freeze (28°F) in Shoal Creek Drive typically arrives around Nov 8, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the point tender summer crops finish. Lighter frosts run ahead of it, near Oct 25, so the watching starts about Oct 9 — about 227 days after the spring freeze cleared.
How long is the growing season in Shoal Creek Drive?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Shoal Creek Drive 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 Shoal Creek Drive?
The federal record around Shoal Creek Drive runs heavier than most — 2,609 documented sites, mostly Mining entries (1,988), the nearest Mining record under a tenth of a mile 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.
How do I protect my plants from frost in Shoal Creek Drive?
From about Oct 9 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 8 (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 8. Hardy greens and roots shrug off light frost and sweeten after it — leave them in.
Everything above is measured at Shoal Creek Drive's scale — its 7a band and its 227-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Shoal Creek Drive'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 Shoal Creek Drive’s own scale
6 of the readings below were taken at Shoal Creek Drive's own scale — its own ~227-day season between 28°F freezes, the 300 acres it covers and 2,609 documented sites around it; 4 are borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Shoal Creek Drive's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Shoal Creek Drive's own 28°F hard-freeze dates, about Mar 26 and Nov 8 and the ~227-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- 2,609 documented contamination sites on the federal record near Shoal Creek Drive, the closest Mining record under a tenth of a mile out from the town centreFederal environmental registers
- Shoal Creek Drive's boundary and the 300 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7a and a ~227-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The ecoregion at Shoal Creek Drive's own centroid, the Ozark HighlandsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
Inherited from a wider read
- Soil character — no town-scale survey exists, so Shoal Creek Drive's 300 acres read through its county's SSURGO summaryfrom Newton County
- Growing-degree days and winter chill — measured county-wide only, so the county page carries themfrom Newton County
- The growing challenges every Missouri grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Missouri
- Butterfly and beetle records, and the farmland pesticide estimate — all published county-widefrom Newton County
What this page can’t tell you
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on any one lot among Shoal Creek Drive's 300 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which side of Shoal Creek Drive you're on — a low spot frosts first and a south wall warms early, and one normal is being asked to speak for all 300 acresreading your own microclimate →
- How close that record sits to YOUR lot — the closest Mining record under a tenth of a mile 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 Shoal Creek Drive-wide figureread your own land →
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