Kings County, in New York, sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b — a band that supports both cool-season staples and warm-season crops chosen to fit the local frost window.
A short list that earns its place here — cabbage, prickly pear, california poppy, and collard greens — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
Kings County lies within New York City metro — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Kings County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Kings 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 Kings County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Kings County — the short answer
Kings County, New York: USDA zone 7b, about 256 days between hard freezes, across 44K acres.
- USDA zone
- 7b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 20
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 1
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~256
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 44K 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 7b is Kings County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Kings County's 256-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Kings County
Across a year, Kings County accumulates about 3,541 growing degree days above 50°F, about 1,305 more than the middle New York county — ahead of 59 of New York’s 62 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 Kings County
Across Kings County, the ground is predominantly Entisols, where Nagunt, Greenbelt, and Flatbush are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally subaqueous with a cemented material surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.2–7.9, slightly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Entisols
Drainage
Subaqueous
Hydric soils
42%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Kings County
The USDA soil survey maps 10% of Kings County as subaqueous — but another 11% drains differently: 9% well drained, 1% very poorly drained.
Nagunt is the most extensive named soil at 34% of mapped acres, then Greenbelt (18%) and Flatbush (13%).
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 Kings County
Each reading below is measured for Kings 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 Kings County are subaqueous, in hydrologic group D — ground that sheds water slowly.
Beds can stay saturated for days after heavy rain, and the roots of most vegetables, berries, and fruit trees suffocate or rot in soil that never drains.
Raised beds or mounded rows lift roots above the wet zone; choose water-tolerant crops for the lowest spots.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Surface pH
MeasuredTopsoil across Kings County runs about pH 5.2–7.9, 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
MeasuredKings County runs about 256 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
MeasuredKings County sits in USDA hardiness zone 7b.
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 Kings County is in
Kings County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Northeastern Coastal Zone (78%) and Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens (22%). 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 Kings County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Kings County's own USDA zone 7b and its own 256-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 New York profile.
Is it too late to plant in Kings 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 20; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 20 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 1 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. With a season this long, “too late” mostly means “switch crops” — second sowings and a full fall garden are the norm, with garlic closing the year.
Documented around Kings County
Spotted lanternfly documented 3 miles from Kings County, first recorded 2020. What to watch for.
- Japanese beetle10 documented records
- monarch butterfly173 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Kings County
USGS estimates 20 lb of Glyphosate on Kings County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Metolachlor-s (15 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (15 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 Kings County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Kings County — 5,767 documented sites across 6 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 29 Superfund sites. Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Kings 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 Kings County
Closest first, across Kings County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- 50 KENILWORTH PLUnderground Storage Tanks · 200 ft
- SOS FRENCH CLEANERSBrownfields · 350 ft
- G.H.R. CO. L.L.C.Underground Storage Tanks · 600 ft
- 723 REALTY LLCUnderground Storage Tanks · 750 ft
- S & G REALTY CO., LLC.Underground Storage Tanks · 800 ft
- 2515 GLENWOOD ROAD OWNERS CORP.Underground Storage Tanks · 850 ft
- MIDWOOD HIGH SCHOOLBrownfields · 850 ft
- FARRAGUT CLEANERSBrownfields · 950 ft
- NYCT - NOSTRAND SUBSTATIONBrownfields · 1000 ft
- K 3214. 1Nitrate · 1100 ft
- MTA NYCT - DEEP WELL #3703 - 2 5 LINEBrownfields · 1100 ft
- RITE AID #03498Brownfields · 1200 ft
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Kings 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 Kings County.
Sources Checked
across Kings County
Severity Distribution
across Kings County
Highest-Severity Sites
Know Before You Grow
- •Underground tanks leak petroleum as they age — near a former filling station, test the soil.
- •Near a brownfield, raised beds of imported soil give your food clean ground.
- •On a private well, test for nitrates: above 10 mg/L the water needs treatment before irrigating.
Check your specific parcel in Kings 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 Kings County average
Your land is one point inside Kings County
Everything above resolves to Kings County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 44K 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 Kings County Average
Kings County Average
- ●USDA Zones 7b, averaged across Kings County
- ●One soil character for all of Kings County
- ●Frost dates read at Kings County's scale: Mar 20 to Dec 1
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Kings County's 7b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Kings County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Kings County, New York — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Kings County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Kings County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Kings County average
How we know this about Kings 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 Kings County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Kings County
When does frost risk typically end in Kings County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Kings County typically lands around Mar 20, 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 10.
How long is the growing season in Kings County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Kings County sees about 256 frost-free days — roughly Mar 20 through Dec 1, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 10 to Nov 17, about 221 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Kings County?
The federal record around Kings County runs heavier than most — 5,767 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (3,261), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks 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.
Everything above is measured at Kings County's scale — its 7b band and its 256-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Kings 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 New York's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Kings County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Kings County's own scale — its own ~256-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 5,767 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Kings County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 7bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Kings County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~256-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Kings CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 5,767 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record under a tenth of a mile outFederal environmental registers
- Kings County's boundary and the 44,401 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 7b and a ~256-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Kings County spans, Northeastern Coastal Zone the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Kings County for 2 tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Kings County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every New York grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom New York
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Kings County — the ~256 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 Kings County's 44,401 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 5,767 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 Kings Countyread your own land →