Livingston Parish, in Louisiana, sits in USDA hardiness zone 9a — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
Reliable performers under these conditions include artichoke, fig, california poppy, and cabbage; what your own ground favors still comes down to its soil, sun, and drainage.
Livingston Parish lies within the Florida Parishes — a regional growing area with its own character.
Grounded in USDA PHZM 2023 · Growable Ground suitability scoring · NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
Livingston Parish holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Livingston 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 Livingston Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Livingston Parish — the short answer
Livingston Parish, Louisiana: USDA zone 9a, about 298 days between hard freezes, across 415K acres.
- USDA zone
- 9a
- USDA PHZM 2023
- Last hard freeze (28°F)
- Feb 11
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- First hard freeze (28°F)
- Dec 6
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~298
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 415K 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 Livingston Parish's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Livingston Parish's 298-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Livingston Parish
Across a year, Livingston Parish accumulates about 6,424 growing degree days above 50°F, about 128 more than the middle Louisiana county — ahead of 36 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 534 hours below 45°F, 78 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 Livingston County
Across Livingston County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Satsuma, Gilbert, and Colyell 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
36%
Hydric soils
65%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Livingston Parish
The USDA soil survey maps 40% of Livingston Parish as poorly drained — but another 52% drains differently: 29% somewhat poorly drained, 14% very poorly drained.
Satsuma is the most extensive named soil at 12% of mapped acres, then Gilbert (12%) and Colyell (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 Livingston Parish
Each reading below is measured for Livingston 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 Livingston 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 Livingston 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
MeasuredLivingston Parish runs about 298 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
MeasuredLivingston 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 Livingston Parish is in
Livingston Parish spans 3 EPA Level III ecoregions — Mississippi Valley Loess Plains (68%), Mississippi Alluvial Plain (21%) and Southern Coastal Plain (11%). 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 Livingston Parish
We scored all 1,086 plants against Livingston Parish's own USDA zone 9a and its own 298-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 Livingston Parish?
Almost never — the real question is what to plant next. Cool-season crops can go in from around Jan 14; tender transplants wait until two to three weeks after the last 28°F hard freeze, which lands near Feb 11 (NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals); and from midsummer, planting counts back from the first fall freeze around Dec 6 — 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.
Documented around Livingston Parish
- monarch butterfly2 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Livingston Parish
USGS estimates 1,061 lb of 2,4-d on Livingston Parish farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Glyphosate (648 lb) and Triclopyr (211 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 Livingston County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Livingston County — 707 documented sites across 6 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 4 Superfund sites. 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 Livingston 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 Livingston Parish
Closest first, across Livingston County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- M & S Fuel MartUnderground Storage Tanks · 1200 ft
- Li-217Nitrate · 0.9 mi
- SIBLEY CAR CARE INCBrownfields · 1.4 mi
- EPIC PIPING LLC - LIVINGSTONBrownfields · 1.5 mi
- EPIC PIPING - FROSTToxics Release Inventory · 1.5 mi
- CECOS International IncUnderground Storage Tanks · 1.7 mi
- CECOS INTERNATIONAL, INC. LIVINGSTON FACILITYBrownfields · 1.9 mi
- 24 Hour DPF.com LLCUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.2 mi
- Li-10Nitrate · 2.4 mi
- LON E STACEY SITEBrownfields · 2.5 mi
- DOLLAR GENERAL #15581Brownfields · 2.5 mi
- Big Boss Travel PlazaUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.9 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Livingston 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 Livingston Parish.
Sources Checked
across Livingston County
Severity Distribution
across Livingston County
Highest-Severity Sites
Know Before You Grow
- •Underground tanks leak petroleum as they age — near a former filling station, test the soil.
- •Near a brownfield, raised beds of imported soil give your food clean ground.
- •On a private well, test for nitrates: above 10 mg/L the water needs treatment before irrigating.
Check your specific parcel in Livingston 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 Livingston Parish average
Your land is one point inside Livingston Parish
Everything above resolves to Livingston Parish as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 415K 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 Livingston Parish Average
Livingston Parish Average
- ●USDA Zones 9a, averaged across Livingston Parish
- ●One soil character for all of Livingston Parish
- ●Frost dates read at Livingston Parish's scale: Feb 11 to Dec 6
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Livingston Parish's 9a
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Livingston Parish
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Livingston Parish, Louisiana — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Livingston Parish averages can't show:
We read public map data around Livingston Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Livingston Parish average
How we know this about Livingston 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 Livingston Parish carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Livingston Parish
When does frost risk typically end in Livingston Parish?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Livingston Parish typically lands around Feb 11, 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 4.
How long is the growing season in Livingston Parish?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Livingston Parish sees about 298 frost-free days — roughly Feb 11 through Dec 6, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 4 to Nov 22, about 263 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Livingston Parish?
The federal record around Livingston Parish is a meaningful one — 707 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks entries (259), 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 Livingston Parish's scale — its 9a band and its 298-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Livingston 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 Livingston Parish’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Livingston Parish's own scale — its own ~298-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 707 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Livingston Parish's own USDA hardiness band, zones 9aUSDA PHZM 2023
- Livingston Parish's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~298-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Livingston ParishUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 707 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
- Livingston Parish's boundary and the 414,809 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 9a and a ~298-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- The 3 ecoregions Livingston Parish spans, Mississippi Valley Loess Plains the largestUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Livingston Parish for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Livingston 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 Livingston Parish — the ~298 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 Livingston Parish's 414,809 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 707 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 Livingston Parishread your own land →