Lane County, in Oregon, sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b — 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, fig, california poppy, and collard greens — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
Lane County lies within the Willamette Valley and the Pacific Northwest — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Lane County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Lane 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 Lane County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Lane County — the short answer
Lane County, Oregon: USDA zone 8b, about 284 days between hard freezes, across 2.9M acres.
- USDA zone
- 8b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 17
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~284
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 2.9M 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 8b is Lane County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Lane County's 284-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Lane County
Across a year, Lane County accumulates about 2,000 growing degree days above 50°F, about 148 more than the middle Oregon county — ahead of 23 of Oregon’s 36 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 Lane County
Across Lane County, the ground is predominantly Inceptisols, where Bohannon, Peavine, and Klickitat are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silty clay loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.3–5.8, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group B soils.
Soil order
Inceptisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
8%
Hydric soils
6%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Lane County
The USDA soil survey maps 84% of Lane County as well drained — but another 14% drains differently: 5% moderately well drained, 5% poorly drained.
Bohannon is the most extensive named soil at 12% of mapped acres, then Peavine (11%) and Klickitat (9%).
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 Lane County
Each reading below is measured for Lane 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 Lane 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 Lane County runs about pH 5.3–5.8, 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
MeasuredLane County runs about 284 days between hard freezes — close to year-round growing.
Frost is rarely the limit here; winter plantings are as real as summer ones, and the harder question is which crops shrug off the summer heat.
Grow cool-season crops through the mild winter, and choose heat-tolerant varieties for the summer beds.
NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Winter hardiness
MeasuredLane County sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b.
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 Lane County is in
Lane County spans 3 EPA Level III ecoregions — Cascades (58%), Willamette Valley (21%) and Coast Range (21%). 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 Lane County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Lane County's own USDA zone 8b and its own 284-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 Oregon profile.
Is it too late to plant in Lane County?
Usually not — gardeners here simply switch what goes in the ground as the season moves. Cool-season crops can go in from around Jan 20; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 17 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 28 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. In a climate this gentle, “too late” hardly applies — the question becomes which crops prefer the cooler months ahead.
Documented around Lane County
- monarch butterfly17 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Lane County
USGS estimates 33,239 lb of Glyphosate on Lane County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of 2,4-d (5,393 lb) and Diuron (2,210 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 Lane County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Lane County — 1,687 documented sites across 8 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 17 Superfund sites. Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Lane 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 Lane County
Closest first, across Lane County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- NORTHWEST ACCESS COUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.7 mi
- LOG-O-LOGGING, INC.Underground Storage Tanks · 1.7 mi
- H TOMMILA TRUCKING LLCBrownfields · 2.0 mi
- Snyder Ranch ArsenicMining · 2.1 mi
- OCTAVE LABS LLCBrownfields · 2.3 mi
- PLEASANT HILL BUS BARNUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- ELIJAH BRISTOWUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
- ON THE WAY, INC.Underground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
- MCDOUGAL BROS INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.0 mi
- CHRISTIAN TRUCKING CO INCUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.3 mi
- JASPER SAWMILLUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.4 mi
- BUY 2 @ PLEASANT HILLUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.6 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Lane 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 Lane County.
Severity Distribution
across Lane County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Lane County, Mining runs higher than the national average — 148 sites across Lane 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 Lane 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 Lane County average
Your land is one point inside Lane County
Everything above resolves to Lane County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 2.9M 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 Lane County Average
Lane County Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Lane County
- ●One soil character for all of Lane County
- ●Frost dates read at Lane County's scale: Feb 17 to Nov 28
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Lane County's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Lane County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Lane County, Oregon — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Lane County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Lane County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Lane County average
How we know this about Lane 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 Lane County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Lane County
When does frost risk typically end in Lane County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Lane County typically lands around Feb 17, 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 Mar 10.
How long is the growing season in Lane County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Lane County sees about 284 frost-free days — roughly Feb 17 through Nov 28, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 10 to Nov 14, about 249 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Lane County?
The federal record around Lane County runs heavier than most — 1,687 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (1,004), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.7 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 Lane County's scale — its 8b band and its 284-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Lane 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 Oregon's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Lane County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Lane County's own scale — its own ~284-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 1,687 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Lane County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Lane County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~284-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Lane CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 1,687 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.7 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Lane County's boundary and the 2,914,616 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~284-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 3 ecoregions Lane County spans, Cascades the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Lane County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Lane County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Oregon grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Oregon
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Lane County — the ~284 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 Lane County's 2,914,616 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 1,687 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 Lane Countyread your own land →