Bossier Parish, in Louisiana, 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.
Well-matched crops include cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens, and the gap between "grows in the area" and "grows in your yard" is closed by soil, sun, and drainage.
Bossier Parish lies within the Piney Woods — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Bossier Parish holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Bossier Parish, 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 Bossier Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Bossier Parish — the short answer
Bossier Parish, Louisiana: USDA zone 8b, about 279 days between hard freezes, across 537K acres.
- USDA zone
- 8b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 22
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~279
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 537K 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 Bossier Parish's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Bossier Parish's 279-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Bossier Parish
Across a year, Bossier Parish accumulates about 5,734 growing degree days above 50°F, about 562 fewer than the middle Louisiana county — ahead of 10 of Louisiana’s 64 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.
Winter banks about 1,016 hours below 45°F, 404 more than the Louisiana middle of 612. Chill is what tells a fruit tree its dormancy is over, and it is set by climate rather than by anything you can build.
Grounded in PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University — 1991–2020 monthly normals
Soil in Bossier County
Across Bossier County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Wrightsville, Sacul, and Gore are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally poorly drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.3–5.8, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Poorly drained
Prime farmland
48%
Hydric soils
30%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Bossier Parish
The USDA soil survey maps 26% of Bossier Parish as poorly drained — but another 68% drains differently: 25% well drained, 24% somewhat poorly drained.
Wrightsville is the most extensive named soil at 10% of mapped acres, then Sacul (9%) and Gore (7%).
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 Bossier Parish
Each reading below is measured for Bossier Parish itself — here is what it means for a garden here, and the move an experienced grower makes about it.
Drainage
MeasuredThe dominant soils across Bossier Parish are poorly drained, 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 Bossier Parish 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
MeasuredBossier Parish runs about 279 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
MeasuredBossier Parish 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 Bossier Parish is in
Bossier Parish sits in the South Central Plains — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Bossier Parish
We scored all 1,086 plants against Bossier Parish's own USDA zone 8b and its own 279-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 Louisiana profile.
Is it too late to plant in Bossier Parish?
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 Jan 25; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 22 (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. With almost year-round growing weather, timing is about heat and rainfall more than frost — some bench is always in play.
Documented around Bossier Parish
- monarch butterfly3 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Bossier Parish
USGS estimates 55,518 lb of 2,4-d on Bossier Parish farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Glyphosate (35,628 lb) and Dicamba (14,890 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 Bossier County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Bossier County — 1,076 documented sites across 6 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 5 Superfund sites (none NPL-listed). Sites tracked in EPA's Superfund program — from assessment-stage CERCLIS entries to confirmed National Priorities List cleanup sites.
There's a meaningful federal record across Bossier County — worth a look before you plant food, not a reason to hold back from growing. Proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard. A soil test before new food beds is the sensible precaution here, and the map shows exactly which sites sit where, so you can see what's actually near you.
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
What's on the federal record near Bossier Parish
Closest first, across Bossier County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Benton Town ofUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.4 mi
- Jerry Ross Plumbing & HeatingUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- Bo-7530ZNitrate · 2.2 mi
- Bo-176Nitrate · 2.4 mi
- Bo-313Nitrate · 2.6 mi
- Bo-314Nitrate · 2.7 mi
- CYPRESS BLACK BAYOU WATER SYSTEMPFAS · 2.7 mi
- TOWN OF BENTON WATER SYSTEMPFAS · 2.7 mi
- Bo-310Nitrate · 2.9 mi
- Bo-309Nitrate · 3.1 mi
- Bo-8991ZNitrate · 3.1 mi
- Highway 162 PropertyUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.3 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Bossier Parish'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 Bossier Parish.
Total Sites
1,076
across Bossier County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
5 Superfund sites (none NPL-listed)
Sources Checked
across Bossier County
Severity Distribution
across Bossier County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Bossier Parish, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 280 sites across Bossier County. 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).
Check your specific parcel in Bossier Parish
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 Bossier Parish average
Your land is one point inside Bossier Parish
Everything above resolves to Bossier Parish as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 537K 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 Bossier Parish Average
Bossier Parish Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Bossier Parish
- ●One soil character for all of Bossier Parish
- ●Frost dates read at Bossier Parish's scale: Feb 22 to Nov 28
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Bossier Parish's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Bossier Parish
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Bossier Parish, Louisiana — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Bossier Parish averages can't show:
We read public map data around Bossier Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Bossier Parish average
How we know this about Bossier Parish
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 Bossier Parish carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Bossier Parish
When does frost risk typically end in Bossier Parish?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Bossier Parish typically lands around Feb 22, 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 15.
How long is the growing season in Bossier Parish?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Bossier Parish sees about 279 frost-free days — roughly Feb 22 through Nov 28, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 15 to Nov 14, about 244 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Bossier Parish?
The federal record around Bossier Parish is a meaningful one — 1,076 documented sites, mostly Brownfields entries (388), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.4 miles out — so a soil test before new food beds is a sensible precaution here, not a reason to hold back from growing. Remember that proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis of any one yard; the contamination map shows exactly what sits where.
Everything above is measured at Bossier Parish's scale — its 8b band and its 279-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Bossier Parish'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 Louisiana's frost window, season length, and soil profile against the plant's real requirements.
What this page reads at Bossier Parish’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Bossier Parish's own scale — its own ~279-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 1,076 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Bossier Parish's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Bossier Parish's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~279-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Bossier ParishUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 1,076 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 1.4 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Bossier Parish's boundary and the 537,357 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~279-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Bossier Parish sitting wholly inside the South Central PlainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Bossier Parish for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Bossier Parish farmland, and roughly how muchUSGS NAWQA EPest county estimates
Inherited from a wider read
- The growing challenges every Louisiana grower plans around — written at state scale, so they stay on the state guidefrom Louisiana
What this page can’t tell you
- How the season shifts across Bossier Parish — the ~279 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 Bossier Parish's 537,357 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 1,076 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 Bossier Parishread your own land →