Franklin 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.
Reliable performers under these conditions include cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens; what your own ground favors still comes down to its soil, sun, and drainage.
Franklin Parish lies within the Mississippi Delta — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Franklin Parish holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Franklin 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 Franklin Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Franklin Parish — the short answer
Franklin Parish, Louisiana: USDA zone 8b, about 285 days between hard freezes, across 400K acres.
- USDA zone
- 8b
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 16
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Nov 28
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~285
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 400K 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 Franklin Parish's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Franklin Parish's 285-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Franklin Parish
Across a year, Franklin Parish accumulates about 5,903 growing degree days above 50°F, about 393 fewer than the middle Louisiana county — ahead of 18 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 929 hours below 45°F, 317 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 Franklin County
Across Franklin County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Sharkey, Gilbert, and Calhoun are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally poorly drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.3, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Poorly drained
Prime farmland
82%
Hydric soils
51%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Franklin Parish
The USDA soil survey maps 43% of Franklin Parish as poorly drained — but another 53% drains differently: 26% moderately well drained, 22% somewhat poorly drained.
Sharkey is the most extensive named soil at 17% of mapped acres, then Gilbert (15%) and Calhoun (12%).
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 Franklin Parish
Each reading below is measured for Franklin 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 Franklin 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 Franklin Parish runs about pH 5.3, 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
MeasuredFranklin Parish runs about 285 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
MeasuredFranklin 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 Franklin Parish is in
Franklin Parish sits in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain — EPA Level III, inside the wider Eastern Temperate Forests. One consistent ecological setting across the whole county.
What Grows in Franklin Parish
We scored all 1,086 plants against Franklin Parish's own USDA zone 8b and its own 285-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 Franklin 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 19; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 16 (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.
What gets applied to farmland in Franklin Parish
USGS estimates 289,497 lb of Glyphosate on Franklin Parish farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Atrazine (254,259 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (174,252 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 Franklin County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Franklin County — 335 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 2 Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Active industrial facilities reporting chemical releases to air, water, and land.
There's a meaningful federal record across Franklin 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 Franklin Parish
Closest first, across Franklin County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Teche Planting Co IncUnderground Storage Tanks · 2100 ft
- SHARP BROTHERS TRACTOR INCBrownfields · 1.5 mi
- Fr-720Nitrate · 1.8 mi
- Winnsboro Town ofUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- Hatfield Hardware & Lumber CoUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- Butler's Service StationUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- Shipley's Gulf ServiceUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- Walley's ShellUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- Matthews Exxon DistributorUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- Jerry's Food MartUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.0 mi
- WINNSBORO AUTO VENTURES LLCBrownfields · 2.0 mi
- BILLS MTR COBrownfields · 2.0 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Franklin 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 Franklin Parish.
Total Sites
335
across Franklin County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
2 Toxics Release Inventory facilities
Sources Checked
across Franklin County
Severity Distribution
across Franklin County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Franklin Parish, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 170 sites across Franklin County. Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
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 Franklin 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 Franklin Parish average
Your land is one point inside Franklin Parish
Everything above resolves to Franklin Parish as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 400K 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 Franklin Parish Average
Franklin Parish Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Franklin Parish
- ●One soil character for all of Franklin Parish
- ●Frost dates read at Franklin Parish's scale: Feb 16 to Nov 28
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Franklin Parish's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Franklin Parish
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Franklin Parish, Louisiana — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Franklin Parish averages can't show:
We read public map data around Franklin Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Franklin Parish average
How we know this about Franklin 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 Franklin Parish carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Franklin Parish
When does frost risk typically end in Franklin Parish?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Franklin Parish typically lands around Feb 16, 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 9.
How long is the growing season in Franklin Parish?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Franklin Parish sees about 285 frost-free days — roughly Feb 16 through Nov 28, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 9 to Nov 14, about 250 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Franklin Parish?
The federal record around Franklin Parish is a meaningful one — 335 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (170), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.4 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 Franklin Parish's scale — its 8b band and its 285-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Franklin 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 Franklin Parish’s own scale
8 of the readings below were taken at Franklin Parish's own scale — its own ~285-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 335 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Franklin Parish's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Franklin Parish's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~285-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Franklin ParishUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 335 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.4 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Franklin Parish's boundary and the 399,551 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~285-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Franklin Parish sitting wholly inside the Mississippi Alluvial PlainUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Franklin 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 Franklin Parish — the ~285 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 Franklin Parish's 399,551 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 335 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 Franklin Parishread your own land →