Lafayette Parish, in Louisiana, sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a — a band that supports both cool-season staples and warm-season crops chosen to fit the local frost window.
A short list that earns its place here — artichoke, fig, california poppy, and cabbage — with any one site's soil, sun, and drainage making the final cut.
Lafayette Parish lies within Acadiana — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Lafayette Parish holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Lafayette Parish — the short answer
Lafayette Parish, Louisiana: USDA zone 9a, about 313 days between hard freezes, across 172K acres.
- USDA zone
- 9a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Jan 29
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 8
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~313
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 172K 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 Lafayette Parish's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Lafayette Parish's 313-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Lafayette Parish
Across a year, Lafayette Parish accumulates about 6,698 growing degree days above 50°F, about 402 more than the middle Louisiana county — ahead of 47 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 318 hours below 45°F, 294 fewer 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 Lafayette County
Across Lafayette County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Frost, Memphis, and Coteau are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally somewhat poorly drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.5, strongly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group C/D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Somewhat poorly drained
Prime farmland
94%
Hydric soils
36%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Lafayette Parish
The USDA soil survey maps 44% of Lafayette Parish as somewhat poorly drained — but another 55% drains differently: 35% poorly drained, 19% well drained.
Frost is the most extensive named soil at 27% of mapped acres, then Memphis (19%) and Coteau (18%).
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 Lafayette Parish
Each reading below is measured for Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish are somewhat poorly drained, in hydrologic group C/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 Lafayette Parish runs about pH 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
Season length
MeasuredLafayette Parish runs about 313 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
MeasuredLafayette Parish sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a.
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 Lafayette Parish is in
Lafayette Parish spans 2 EPA Level III ecoregions — Western Gulf Coastal Plain (91%) and Mississippi Alluvial Plain (9%). 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 Lafayette Parish
We scored all 1,086 plants against Lafayette Parish's own USDA zone 9a and its own 313-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 Lafayette 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 1; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Jan 29 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 8 — 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 Lafayette Parish
- monarch butterfly41 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Lafayette Parish
USGS estimates 26,830 lb of Glyphosate on Lafayette Parish farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of 2,4-d (6,824 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (4,531 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 Lafayette County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Lafayette County — 2,508 documented sites across 6 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 1 Superfund site (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 Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish
Closest first, across Lafayette County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- C J DoreUnderground Storage Tanks · 150 ft
- Lafayette Vortac FacilityUnderground Storage Tanks · 150 ft
- Koa CampgroundUnderground Storage Tanks · 150 ft
- Darrell MenardUnderground Storage Tanks · 150 ft
- P&H Electric IncUnderground Storage Tanks · 150 ft
- TEST FACILITYToxics Release Inventory · 1400 ft
- LAFAYETTE HIGH SCHOOLBrownfields · 2100 ft
- CAR CARE CNTRBrownfields · 0.6 mi
- AZALEA SOUTHSIDE CLEANERS INCBrownfields · 0.6 mi
- CONGRESS CLEANERS INCBrownfields · 0.6 mi
- B& L Service StoreUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
- Royal Food Store IncUnderground Storage Tanks · 0.6 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish.
Total Sites
2,508
across Lafayette County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
1 Superfund site (none NPL-listed)
Sources Checked
across Lafayette County
Severity Distribution
across Lafayette County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Lafayette Parish, Brownfields runs higher than the national average — 1,385 sites across Lafayette County. Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
Brownfields: Brownfield sites are former commercial or industrial properties where legacy soil contamination (heavy metals, PAHs, petroleum compounds) may persist.
Check EPA brownfield remediation status — many sites have completed cleanup with institutional controls.
Check your specific parcel in Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish average
Your land is one point inside Lafayette Parish
Everything above resolves to Lafayette Parish as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 172K 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 Lafayette Parish Average
Lafayette Parish Average
- ●USDA Zones 9a, averaged across Lafayette Parish
- ●One soil character for all of Lafayette Parish
- ●Frost dates read at Lafayette Parish's scale: Jan 29 to Dec 8
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Lafayette Parish's 9a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Lafayette Parish
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Lafayette Parish averages can't show:
We read public map data around Lafayette Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Lafayette Parish average
How we know this about Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Lafayette Parish
When does frost risk typically end in Lafayette Parish?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Lafayette Parish typically lands around Jan 29, 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 Feb 19.
How long is the growing season in Lafayette Parish?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Lafayette Parish sees about 313 frost-free days — roughly Jan 29 through Dec 8, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Feb 19 to Nov 24, about 278 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Lafayette Parish?
The federal record around Lafayette Parish is a meaningful one — 2,508 documented sites, mostly Brownfields entries (1,385), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record under a tenth of a mile 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 Lafayette Parish's scale — its 9a band and its 313-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Lafayette Parish's own scale — its own ~313-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 2,508 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Lafayette Parish's own USDA hardiness band, zones 9aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Lafayette Parish's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~313-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Lafayette ParishUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 2,508 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record under a tenth of a mile outFederal environmental registers
- Lafayette Parish's boundary and the 172,053 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 9a and a ~313-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 2 ecoregions Lafayette Parish spans, Western Gulf Coastal Plain the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Lafayette Parish for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Lafayette 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 Lafayette Parish — the ~313 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 Lafayette Parish's 172,053 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 2,508 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 Lafayette Parishread your own land →