Skagit County, in Washington, sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
Growers here do well with cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens — with the usual caveat that any single yard's soil, sun, and drainage cast the deciding vote.
Skagit County lies within 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
Skagit County holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Skagit 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 Skagit County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Skagit County — the short answer
Skagit County, Washington: USDA zone 8b, about 251 days between hard freezes, across 1.1M acres.
- USDA zone
- 8b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Mar 15
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 21
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~251
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 1.1M 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 Skagit County's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Skagit County's 251-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat in Skagit County
Across a year, Skagit County accumulates about 1,436 growing degree days above 50°F, about 277 fewer than the middle Washington county — ahead of 13 of Washington’s 39 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 Skagit County
Across Skagit County, the ground is predominantly Andisols, where Vanzandt, Kindy, and Montborne are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a gravelly medial silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.0–6.0, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C soils.
Soil order
Andisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
6%
Hydric soils
12%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Skagit County
The USDA soil survey maps 34% of Skagit County as well drained — but another 57% drains differently: 34% moderately well drained, 7% somewhat excessively drained.
Vanzandt is the most extensive named soil at 5% of mapped acres, then Kindy (4%) and Montborne (3%).
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 Skagit County
Each reading below is measured for Skagit 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 Skagit County are well drained, in hydrologic group C — 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 Skagit County runs about pH 5.0–6.0, 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
MeasuredSkagit County runs about 251 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
MeasuredSkagit 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 Skagit County is in
Skagit County spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — North Cascades (78%) and Puget Lowland (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 Skagit County
We scored all 1,086 plants against Skagit County's own USDA zone 8b and its own 251-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 Washington profile.
Is it too late to plant in Skagit 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 Feb 15; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Mar 15 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Nov 21 — 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.
Documented around Skagit County
- monarch butterfly2 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Skagit County
USGS estimates 12,914 lb of Metolachlor-s on Skagit County farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (12,914 lb) and Glyphosate (11,283 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 Skagit County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Skagit County — 755 documented sites across 8 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 4 Superfund sites (none NPL-listed). Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
Skagit 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 Skagit County
Closest first, across Skagit County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- CONCRETE SHOPUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.8 mi
- L B & R LOGGING COMPANY LPUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.5 mi
- ASSOCIATED PETROLEUM PRODUCTS, INC.Underground Storage Tanks · 3.5 mi
- SKAGIT COUNTY RFA STATION 2Brownfields · 3.6 mi
- CONCRETE SCHOOL DISTRICT 11Underground Storage Tanks · 3.7 mi
- LOGGER'S LANDINGUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.9 mi
- GRANDY CREEK GROCERYUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.0 mi
- PHILIPS' CORNER RICH OR DALE PHILIPSUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.4 mi
- CONCRETE TOWN OFUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.4 mi
- GTE NORTHWEST INCORPORATED 6634Underground Storage Tanks · 4.5 mi
- PETERSON MOTOR COUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.5 mi
- TEXACO PETERSONUnderground Storage Tanks · 4.5 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Skagit 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 Skagit County.
Severity Distribution
across Skagit County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Skagit County, two things run higher than the national average across Skagit County — CAFO (33 sites) and Mining (134 sites). It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around it.
CAFO: CAFOs pose a different contamination profile than chemical sources.
Mining: Mining sites — both historic and active — can leach heavy metals (arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury) into soil and water for centuries after operations cease.
Wash all produce consumed raw thoroughly, especially leafy greens grown near CAFOs.
Test soil for heavy metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury) — this is essential near any mining site.
Check your specific parcel in Skagit 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 Skagit County average
Your land is one point inside Skagit County
Everything above resolves to Skagit County as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 1.1M 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 Skagit County Average
Skagit County Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Skagit County
- ●One soil character for all of Skagit County
- ●Frost dates read at Skagit County's scale: Mar 15 to Nov 21
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Skagit County's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Skagit County
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Skagit County, Washington — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Skagit County averages can't show:
We read public map data around Skagit County — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Skagit County average
How we know this about Skagit 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 Skagit County carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Skagit County
When does frost risk typically end in Skagit County?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Skagit County typically lands around Mar 15, 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 5.
How long is the growing season in Skagit County?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Skagit County sees about 251 frost-free days — roughly Mar 15 through Nov 21, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Apr 5 to Nov 7, about 216 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Skagit County?
The federal record around Skagit County runs heavier than most — 755 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (388), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 2.8 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 Skagit County's scale — its 8b band and its 251-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Skagit 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 Washington's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Skagit County’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Skagit County's own scale — its own ~251-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 755 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Skagit County's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Skagit County's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~251-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Skagit CountyUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 755 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 2.8 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Skagit County's boundary and the 1,107,347 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~251-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Skagit County spans, North Cascades the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Skagit County for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Skagit County farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Washington grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Washington
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Skagit County — the ~251 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 Skagit County's 1,107,347 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 755 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 Skagit Countyread your own land →