Boyd County, in Nebraska, sits in USDA hardiness zone 5a — a range where zone-matched perennials and frost-aware annual timing set what succeeds.
A short list that earns its place here — cabbage, cranberry, lavender, and collard greens — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Boyd County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Boyd 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 Boyd County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Boyd County — the short answer
Boyd County, Nebraska: USDA zone 5a, about 178 days between hard freezes, across 345K acres.
- USDA zone
- 5a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 21
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 16
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~178
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 345K 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 5a is Boyd County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Boyd County's 178-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Boyd County
Across a year, Boyd County accumulates about 2,710 growing degree days above 50°F, about 130 fewer than the middle Nebraska county — ahead of 32 of Nebraska’s 93 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 Boyd County
Across Boyd County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Labu, Onita, and Bristow are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silty clay surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.7–7.6, neutral. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
28%
Hydric soils
2%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Boyd County
The USDA soil survey maps 71% of Boyd County as well drained — but another 27% drains differently: 11% moderately well drained, 8% excessively drained.
Labu is the most extensive named soil at 12% of mapped acres, then Onita (11%) and Bristow (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 Boyd County
Each reading below is measured for Boyd 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 Boyd County are well drained, in hydrologic group D — 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 Boyd County runs about pH 6.7–7.6, 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
MeasuredBoyd County runs about 178 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
MeasuredBoyd County sits in USDA hardiness zone 5a.
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 Boyd County is in
Boyd County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Northwestern Glaciated Plains (91%) and Northwestern Great 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 Boyd County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Boyd County's own USDA zone 5a and its own 178-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 Nebraska profile.
Is it too late to plant in Boyd 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 Mar 24; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 21 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 16 — 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 Boyd County
- monarch butterfly1 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Boyd County
USGS estimates 71,457 lb of Glyphosate on Boyd County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Acetochlor (22,873 lb) and Atrazine (12,167 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 Boyd County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Boyd County — 49 documented sites across 4 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 6 concentrated animal feeding operations. Large-scale animal operations that can contaminate soil and groundwater with nitrates and pathogens.
The federal record across Boyd County is light. Growing food here starts from a strong position — a quick pass over the map tells you whether any recorded site sits near your land, and if one does, that's information to plant with, not a reason to stop.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Boyd County
Closest first, across Boyd County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- 34N 13W24AA 1Nitrate · 1.3 mi
- RUSTGO COBrownfields · 2.9 mi
- THE SHORT STOPUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.7 mi
- ROADRUNNERUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.9 mi
- NEBRASKA DEPT OF TRANSUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.9 mi
- BOYD COUNTY COURTHOUSEUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.0 mi
- QUICK SERVICEUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.1 mi
- BUTTE FARM SUPPLY INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.7 mi
- KOENIG FEEDLOTCAFO · 5.9 mi
- HAGBERG FEEDYARDSCAFO · 7.3 mi
- HAUN LAND & CATTLE, INC.CAFO · 8.6 mi
- 33N 11W30AD 1Nitrate · 8.7 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Boyd 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 Boyd County.
Total Sites
49
across Boyd County
Risk Level
Low
Highest-severity
6 concentrated animal feeding operations
Sources Checked
across Boyd County
Severity Distribution
across Boyd County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Boyd County, two things run higher than the national average across Boyd County — CAFO (6 sites) and Nitrate (30 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 Boyd 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 Boyd County average
Your land is one point inside Boyd County
Everything above resolves to Boyd County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 345K 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 Boyd County Average
Boyd County Average
- ●USDA Zones 5a, averaged across Boyd County
- ●One soil character for all of Boyd County
- ●Frost dates read at Boyd County's scale: Apr 21 to Oct 16
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Boyd County's 5a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Boyd County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Boyd County, Nebraska — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Boyd County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Boyd County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Boyd County average
How we know this about Boyd 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 Boyd County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Boyd County
When does frost risk typically end in Boyd County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Boyd County typically lands around Apr 21, 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 12.
How long is the growing season in Boyd County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Boyd County sees about 178 frost-free days — roughly Apr 21 through Oct 16, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer May 12 to Oct 2, about 143 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Boyd County?
The federal record around Boyd County is light — 49 documented sites across the 9 federal source types we checked, mostly Nitrate entries (30), the nearest Nitrate record about 1.3 miles out — and proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard. Growing food here starts from a strong position; a soil test before new food beds settles any site-specific question.
Everything above is measured at Boyd County's scale — its 5a band and its 178-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Boyd 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 Nebraska's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Boyd County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Boyd County's own scale — its own ~178-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 49 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Boyd County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 5aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Boyd County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~178-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Boyd CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 49 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Nitrate record about 1.3 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Boyd County's boundary and the 345,195 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 5a and a ~178-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Boyd County spans, Northwestern Glaciated Plains the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Boyd County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Boyd County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Nebraska grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Nebraska
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Boyd County — the ~178 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 Boyd County's 345,195 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 49 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 Boyd Countyread your own land →