Grant Parish, in Louisiana, sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a — a zone band wide enough that plant choice, not possibility, is the interesting question.
Growers here do well with artichoke, fig, california poppy, and cabbage — with the usual caveat that any single yard's soil, sun, and drainage cast the deciding vote.
Grant 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
Grant Parish holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Grant 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 Grant Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Grant Parish — the short answer
Grant Parish, Louisiana: USDA zone 9a, about 289 days between hard freezes, across 412K acres.
- USDA zone
- 9a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 16
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 2
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~289
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 412K 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 9a is Grant Parish's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Grant Parish's 289-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Grant Parish
Across a year, Grant Parish accumulates about 6,001 growing degree days above 50°F, about 295 fewer than the middle Louisiana county — ahead of 22 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 742 hours below 45°F, 130 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 Grant County
Across Grant County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Smithdale, Ruston, and Cadeville are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a fine sandy loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.0–5.5, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group B soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
45%
Hydric soils
20%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Grant Parish
The USDA soil survey maps 38% of Grant Parish as well drained — but another 58% drains differently: 30% moderately well drained, 18% poorly drained.
Smithdale is the most extensive named soil at 17% of mapped acres, then Ruston (16%) and Cadeville (10%).
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 Grant Parish
Each reading below is measured for Grant 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 Grant Parish 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 Grant Parish runs about pH 5.0–5.5, 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
Wet ground
MeasuredAbout 20% of Grant Parish 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
MeasuredGrant Parish runs about 289 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
The kind of country Grant Parish is in
Grant 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 Grant Parish
We scored all 1,086 plants against Grant Parish's own USDA zone 9a and its own 289-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 Grant Parish?
Rarely: the season closes in stages, not all at once, and each stage has its crops. 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 Dec 2 — long-season crops need about 90 days of runway, quick greens only 30. And with a calendar this mild, the honest answer is that planting barely stops — winter opens seasons colder regions never see.
Documented around Grant Parish
- monarch butterfly1 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Grant Parish
USGS estimates 33,283 lb of Glyphosate on Grant Parish farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Acephate (17,377 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (12,106 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 Grant County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Grant County — 434 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 6 Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Active industrial facilities reporting chemical releases to air, water, and land.
There's a meaningful federal record across Grant 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 Grant Parish
Closest first, across Grant County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Allan M DeanUnderground Storage Tanks · 900 ft
- SOUTH GRANT WATER CORPORATIONPFAS · 0.6 mi
- G-316Nitrate · 1.5 mi
- G-314Nitrate · 1.6 mi
- G-273Nitrate · 1.7 mi
- G-398Nitrate · 1.8 mi
- Grant Parish Police Jury - Landfill & Maintenance Barn & Tire FacilityUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.1 mi
- DOLLAR GENERAL #11625Brownfields · 2.2 mi
- GRANT PARISH POLICE JURY - LANDFILL & MAINTENANCE BARN & TIRE FACILITYBrownfields · 2.2 mi
- G-335Nitrate · 2.3 mi
- G-271Nitrate · 2.3 mi
- G-226Nitrate · 2.3 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Grant 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 Grant Parish.
Total Sites
434
across Grant County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
6 Toxics Release Inventory facilities
Sources Checked
across Grant County
Severity Distribution
across Grant County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Grant Parish, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 314 sites across Grant 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 Grant 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 Grant Parish average
Your land is one point inside Grant Parish
Everything above resolves to Grant Parish as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 412K 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 Grant Parish Average
Grant Parish Average
- ●USDA Zones 9a, averaged across Grant Parish
- ●One soil character for all of Grant Parish
- ●Frost dates read at Grant Parish's scale: Feb 16 to Dec 2
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Grant Parish's 9a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Grant Parish
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Grant Parish, Louisiana — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Grant Parish averages can't show:
We read public map data around Grant Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Grant Parish average
How we know this about Grant 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 Grant Parish carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Grant Parish
When does frost risk typically end in Grant Parish?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Grant 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 Grant Parish?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Grant Parish sees about 289 frost-free days — roughly Feb 16 through Dec 2, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 9 to Nov 18, about 254 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Grant Parish?
The federal record around Grant Parish is a meaningful one — 434 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (314), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.2 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 Grant Parish's scale — its 9a band and its 289-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Grant 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 Grant Parish’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Grant Parish's own scale — its own ~289-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 434 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Grant Parish's own USDA hardiness band, zones 9aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Grant Parish's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~289-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Grant ParishUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 434 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.2 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Grant Parish's boundary and the 412,000 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 9a and a ~289-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Grant Parish sitting wholly inside the South Central PlainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Grant Parish for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Grant 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 Grant Parish — the ~289 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 Grant Parish's 412,000 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 434 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 Grant Parishread your own land →