Faulk County, in South Dakota, sits in USDA hardiness zone 4b — a band that supports both cool-season staples and warm-season crops chosen to fit the local frost window.
These conditions suit cabbage, cranberry, turkish rocket, and collard greens — a starting list any specific site will trim or extend with its own soil, sun, and drainage.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Faulk County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Faulk 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 Faulk County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Faulk County — the short answer
Faulk County, South Dakota: USDA zone 4b, about 164 days between hard freezes, across 628K acres.
- USDA zone
- 4b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Apr 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Oct 9
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~164
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 628K 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 4b is Faulk County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Faulk County's 164-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Faulk County
Across a year, Faulk County accumulates about 2,332 growing degree days above 50°F, about 94 fewer than the middle South Dakota county — ahead of 24 of South Dakota’s 66 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 Faulk County
Across Faulk County, the ground is predominantly Mollisols, where Williams, Bowbells, and Tonka are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 6.7–7.2, neutral. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group B soils.
Soil order
Mollisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
1%
Hydric soils
15%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Faulk County
The USDA soil survey maps 80% of Faulk County as well drained — but another 19% drains differently: 8% poorly drained, 5% moderately well drained.
Williams is the most extensive named soil at 36% of mapped acres, then Bowbells (18%) and Tonka (6%).
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 Faulk County
Each reading below is measured for Faulk 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 Faulk 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 Faulk County runs about pH 6.7–7.2, 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
Wet ground
MeasuredAbout 15% of Faulk County is mapped as hydric — wetland — soil.
If your lot falls in one of those pockets, a standard in-ground bed will fight waterlogging all season, and roots that need air will struggle.
Check how your own ground drains before you dig; raised beds or moisture-loving plantings turn a wet corner from a problem into a niche.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Season length
MeasuredFaulk County runs about 164 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
The kind of country Faulk County is in
Faulk County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Northwestern Glaciated Plains (55%) and Northern Glaciated Plains (45%). 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 Faulk County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Faulk County's own USDA zone 4b and its own 164-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 South Dakota profile.
Is it too late to plant in Faulk County?
Rarely: the season closes in stages, not all at once, and each stage has its crops. Cool-season crops can go in from around Mar 31; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Apr 28 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Oct 9 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. The tail of the season still works: sixty-day crops into late summer, quick greens after, garlic last of all.
Documented around Faulk County
- monarch butterfly1 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Faulk County
USGS estimates 345,022 lb of Glyphosate on Faulk County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Acetochlor (134,349 lb) and Dicamba (65,094 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 Faulk County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Faulk County — 109 documented sites across 3 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 3 brownfield sites. Former commercial or industrial land where legacy contamination may persist.
The federal record across Faulk 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 Faulk County
Closest first, across Faulk County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- KEYTROL SYSTEMUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.1 mi
- 118N69W14BCBC2Nitrate · 2.4 mi
- FAULK COUNTY HWY DEPARTMENTUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.4 mi
- 118N69W14BCCA (2)Nitrate · 2.5 mi
- FAULKTON PUBLIC SCHOOLUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- FAULKTON SCHOOL DISTRICT 24-2Brownfields · 2.5 mi
- FAULKTON FARMERS ELEV COUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- FARMERS UNION OIL COUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- BERMAC 2Underground Storage Tanks · 2.5 mi
- 118N69W15DACBNitrate · 2.5 mi
- BERMACUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
- VOGEL'SUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.6 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Faulk 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 Faulk County.
Severity Distribution
across Faulk County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Faulk County, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 90 sites across Faulk County. That's not a problem with your land — it's information about it.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Check your specific parcel in Faulk 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 Faulk County average
Your land is one point inside Faulk County
Everything above resolves to Faulk County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 628K 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 Faulk County Average
Faulk County Average
- ●USDA Zones 4b, averaged across Faulk County
- ●One soil character for all of Faulk County
- ●Frost dates read at Faulk County's scale: Apr 28 to Oct 9
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Faulk County's 4b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Faulk County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Faulk County, South Dakota — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Faulk County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Faulk County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Faulk County average
How we know this about Faulk 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 Faulk County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Faulk County
When does frost risk typically end in Faulk County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Faulk County typically lands around Apr 28, 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 19.
How long is the growing season in Faulk County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Faulk County sees about 164 frost-free days — roughly Apr 28 through Oct 9, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer May 19 to Sep 25, about 129 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Faulk County?
The federal record around Faulk County shows 109 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (90), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 2.1 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 Faulk County's scale — its 4b band and its 164-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Faulk 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 South Dakota's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Faulk County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Faulk County's own scale — its own ~164-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 109 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Faulk County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 4bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Faulk County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~164-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Faulk CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 109 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 2.1 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Faulk County's boundary and the 628,296 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 4b and a ~164-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Faulk County spans, Northwestern Glaciated Plains the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Faulk County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Faulk County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every South Dakota grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom South Dakota
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Faulk County — the ~164 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 Faulk County's 628,296 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 109 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 Faulk Countyread your own land →