The Florida Parishes spans USDA hardiness zone 9a — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
The Florida Parishes are Louisiana's upland exception — rolling pine hills of well-drained loessial and sandy soils east of the Mississippi and north of Lake Pontchartrain, a growing environment nothing like the flat coastal marsh to the south or the river alluvium to the west. This is the Ponchatoula–Hammond strawberry-and-truck-crop belt, where abundant pine-straw mulch and acidic upland ground built a berry culture dating to the 1800s; Tangipahoa Parish alone still grows roughly 80% of Louisiana's strawberries. All six parishes sit in USDA Zone 9a, but the inland uplands run a slightly shorter, more frost-prone season (~285–300 frost-free days) than the immediate coast — long enough for two truck-crop cycles, cool enough that winter-set strawberries thrive. Growers here do well with okra, satsuma orange, live oak, and pecan — with the usual caveat that any single yard's soil, sun, and drainage cast the deciding vote.
The Florida Parishes spans Louisiana.
Your yard isn't all of the Florida Parishes.
The Florida Parishes spans USDA zones 9a, but your parcel sits in exactly one — and slope, tree cover, and low spots nudge it further. 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 Florida Parishes — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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The Florida Parishes — the short answer
The Florida Parishes: USDA zones 9a, 285–301 frost-free days, in Louisiana.
- USDA zones
- 9a
- USDA PHZM 2023, aggregated over the footprint
- Frost-free season
- 285–301 days
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- Counties
- 6
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Region type
- County cluster
- Growable Ground growing-region registry
Region boundary: Growable Ground growing-region registry — curated county clusters, EPA Level III ecoregions, and town clusters drawn finer than any county. Where a region publishes no measured season, no season figure is shown.
Hardiness Zone Range
What Grows in the Florida Parishes
Plants matched to the Florida Parishes' USDA zones 9a, ordered by how much hardiness margin each has across the region — the ones with room to spare at both ends of this band lead. Each links to its full growing profile.
Native Plants of the Florida Parishes
Plants the USDA PLANTS Database documents as native and present in this region’s state, kept only where the published hardiness range meets the Florida Parishes’s USDA zones 9a — closest range match first. Presence is recorded by state, so a plant can be documented across the state and still be scarce in your corner of the region.
The ground across the Florida Parishes
The USDA soil survey maps this ground county by county. These are those records weighted by land area across six member counties — this region’s own profile, not a state figure.
The ground is predominantly Ultisols, at 45% of mapped acres, followed by Alfisols (30%), Inceptisols (11%) and Entisols (9%). Six soil orders appear somewhere inside the footprint, which is the honest reason a regional soil answer only goes so far. The most extensive named soils are Tangi, Ruston, and Savannah.
36% of those acres are well drained, and another 25% moderately well drained, 16% poorly drained. Topsoil pH runs 4.6–6.7 between the lowest and the highest county on record. 39% of the footprint is classed prime farmland.
Soil order
Ultisols
Drainage
Well drained
Topsoil pH
4.6–6.7
Hydric soils
35%
Soil changes across a driveway, so which of these your own ground sits on is a parcel question rather than a regional one. Livingston County holds the most wetland ground here, at 65% — soil types explained.
USDA NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access
What this means for growing in the Florida Parishes
The soil survey reads this ground county by county, and the readings above are those records summed across the Florida Parishes. Here is what they mean for a garden here — and the move an experienced grower makes about each one.
Drainage
From county records36% of the mapped acres across the Florida Parishes are well drained — ground that drains quickly. That is area-weighted across all six of its mapped counties.
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
From county recordsTopsoil across the Florida Parishes runs pH 4.6–6.7 — acidic in all six of them.
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
Wet ground
From county recordsAbout 35% of the ground across the Florida Parishes is mapped as hydric — wetland — soil. Livingston County carries the most, at 65%.
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
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across the Florida Parishes — and how to grow with it.
Across the Florida Parishes' 6 counties the federal record holds 2,793 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks (1,086), Nitrate (812) and Brownfields (802). The heaviest single county is Tangipahoa County, with 959.
That is a regional count, not a reading of any one lot — proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis. Open the map outlined to the Florida Parishes to see which records sit where you actually grow.
Sources Checked
Summed across the 6 counties in the Florida Parishes
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around the Florida Parishes, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 812 sites across the 6 counties in the Florida Parishes. It's not cause for alarm — it's worth knowing, and there's a sensible way to grow around 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).
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
Your land is one point inside the Florida Parishes
Everything above resolves to the Florida Parishes as a whole — a footprint spanning USDA zones 9a. Your parcel sits in exactly one of them. 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 region 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 regional average.
Your Lot vs the Florida Parishes Average
Florida Parishes Average
- ●USDA Zones 9a, averaged across Florida Parishes
- ●One soil character for all of Florida Parishes
- ●State-average frost dates
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Florida Parishes' 9a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in the Florida Parishes
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in the Florida Parishes — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, contamination, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Florida Parishes averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Florida Parishes — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Florida Parishes average
How we know this about the Florida Parishes
The boundary: a cluster of neighboring counties. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one, and every figure on this page was measured over the counties inside it rather than borrowed from the state around it.
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, aggregated across the footprint; the growing season from NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS 1991–2020 28°F normals, read at each member’s own record; boundaries from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination record from the federal sources named in that beat above; the soil from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, read at each member county’s own record and weighted to this footprint by land area. Where a member carries no record of its own, it is absent from the figure rather than filled in.
Common questions about the Florida Parishes
What hardiness zone is the Florida Parishes?
The Florida Parishes spans USDA hardiness zones 9a, aggregated from the USDA Agricultural Research Service Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 across the region's counties. Zones reflect average annual extreme minimum temperatures from 1991–2020 data.
How long is the growing season in the Florida Parishes?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, the Florida Parishes' counties mostly run 292 to 298 frost-free days, median 296 (NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991–2020, over 6 member counties). That 6-day spread is the honest read — no single season describes 6 counties, and each county guide below carries its own.
When does frost risk end in the Florida Parishes?
Across the Florida Parishes, the middle half of member counties see their last 28°F hard freeze between Feb 11 and Feb 15 (median Feb 13), and their first fall freeze between Dec 4 and Dec 7. Those are hard freezes, not the last light frost: tender transplants wait for about Mar 6, and elevation decides which end of a 4-day spread you garden in.
What grows well in the Florida Parishes?
The Florida Parishes' conditions suit plants such as Okra, Satsuma Orange, Live Oak, Pecan, Muscadine Grape. What actually thrives on any one site still turns on its specific soil, sun, and drainage — we score each plant against the real conditions at your address.
How is the Florida Parishes defined?
The Florida Parishes is defined here as a curated cluster of 6 neighboring counties that share a growing character. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one — every county in it is named on this page.
Which states does the Florida Parishes cover?
The Florida Parishes spans Louisiana. Each state's full growing guide is linked on this page.
What other growing regions cover the same states?
Mississippi Delta, Piney Woods, Gulf Coast, Acadiana, and Greater New Orleans share at least one state with the Florida Parishes. Growing regions overlap and interlock — a single address can sit inside more than one, which is why the precise read is always the parcel, not the region.
What this page reads at the Florida Parishes’s own scale
6 of the readings below were taken at the Florida Parishes' own scale — the zone 9a band across its footprint, a median 296-day season across its 6 counties and 2,793 documented federal contamination records across its 6 counties, 959 of them in Tangipahoa County alone; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The USDA hardiness band 9a aggregated across all 6 counties in the footprintUSDA PHZM 2023
- The boundary itself — the 6 counties this region is curated fromGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The growing character that makes this region distinct from the states it crossesGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The 28°F season across the footprint — the middle half of its 6 counties run 292 to 298 frost-free days, median 296NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- The federal contamination record over the whole footprint — 2,793 documented federal contamination records across its 6 counties, 959 of them in Tangipahoa County aloneEPA, USGS and USDA federal site records
- The soil order mix across the footprint — 45% Ultisols, topsoil pH 4.6–6.7, area-weighted across its 6 mapped countiesUSDA NRCS SSURGO
Inherited from a wider read
- The candidate plant list — its state's curated sets, merged and filtered to zones 9afrom Louisiana
What this page can’t tell you
- Which end of the 6-day range your ground sits at — 292 days at one extreme, 298 at the other, decided mostly by elevationfrost dates explained →
- Which of those soils your own ground sits on — the survey maps them county-wide, and they change across a drivewaysoil types explained →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on one specific lotwhy one lot differs from the next →
Explore the Florida Parishes
State growing guides
Counties in this region
Other growing regions across Louisiana
The flat, deep, dark alluvial bottomland of the lower Mississippi River — extraordinarily fertile cotton, soybean, rice, and sweet-potato ground.
The sandy, acidic pine-and-hardwood forest belt of East Texas and western Louisiana — the humid South Central Plains, where a long frost-free season of roughly nine months favors heat- and acid-tolerant Southern gardens.
The humid, near-frost-free coastal rim of the Gulf of Mexico — long seasons, sandy and alluvial soils, heat, and hurricanes shaping what thrives. (Representative coastal counties, not exhaustive.)
Acadiana's Cajun Prairie grows on flat, poorly-drained heavy clay and loam terraces — the rice, crawfish, and Creole-tomato country around Lafayette, Crowley, and Opelousas — not the marshy Gulf rim to the south or the sandy pine uplands to the north. All seven prairie parishes sit in USDA Zone 9a with a long ~305-313-day frost-free season, so the limiting factor here isn't cold, it's drainage: prairie ground that ponds after rain rewards raised beds and rewards heat-loving crops like okra, sugarcane, and Creole tomatoes. (Zone and frost-free figures per Growable Ground county climate data; officially the heart of Louisiana's 1971-designated 22-parish Acadiana.)
What separates Greater New Orleans from the wider Gulf-coast rim isn't its climate — the near-frost-free 9b band (334-338 frost-free days across all five parishes) is shared with the rest of the coast. It's the ground: much of the metro sits at or below sea level with a high water table, so raised beds and drainage-first design are the default across Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles, and St. John the Baptist — not the open-field approach a generic rim page assumes. That same long, mild window is what carries satsumas and year-round greens through winter here.