Red River Parish, in Louisiana, sits in USDA hardiness zone 8b — enough range to grow cool-season vegetables, hardy fruit, and warm-season crops that mature before the first hard frost.
Expect cabbage, fig, california poppy, and collard greens to be strong candidates here; the deciding factors on any one parcel stay local — soil, sun, and drainage.
Red River 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
Red River Parish holds more than one microclimate.
Soils and elevations shift across Red River 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 Red River Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
No card required · your full report in seconds
Red River Parish — the short answer
Red River Parish, Louisiana: USDA zone 8b, about 280 days between hard freezes, across 249K 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 29
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- Days between freezes
- ~280
- NOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals, 28°F
- County area
- 249K 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 Red River Parish's average, not your lot's — a low corner or a tree line moves it. Against Red River Parish's 280-day season, see what your own ground reads.
Heat and winter chill in Red River Parish
Across a year, Red River Parish accumulates about 5,846 growing degree days above 50°F, about 450 fewer than the middle Louisiana county — ahead of 17 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 939 hours below 45°F, 327 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 Red River County
Across Red River County, the ground is predominantly Alfisols, where Guyton, Moreland, and Ruston are the most extensive named soil series. The soil is generally well drained with a silt loam surface. Topsoil pH runs about 5.3–7.0, slightly acidic. Rainfall drains through hydrologic group D soils.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Well drained
Prime farmland
58%
Hydric soils
17%
Soil still varies lot by lot — soil types explained.
How the ground varies across Red River Parish
The USDA soil survey maps 34% of Red River Parish as well drained — but another 60% drains differently: 23% moderately well drained, 21% poorly drained.
Guyton is the most extensive named soil at 14% of mapped acres, then Moreland (13%) and Ruston (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 Red River Parish
Each reading below is measured for Red River 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 Red River Parish are well drained, in hydrologic group D — 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 Red River Parish runs about pH 5.3–7.0, close to neutral.
This is the range most vegetables prefer — one correction you probably do not have to make, which is genuinely good news for a new bed.
Keep it there with compost rather than lime or sulfur, and only amend if your own soil test says otherwise.
USDA NRCS SSURGO
Wet ground
MeasuredAbout 17% of Red River 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
MeasuredRed River Parish runs about 280 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 Red River Parish is in
Red River 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 Red River Parish
We scored all 1,086 plants against Red River Parish's own USDA zone 8b and its own 280-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 Red River 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 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 29 — 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 Red River Parish
- monarch butterfly1 documented records
Sighting records, so they follow observers as much as insects.
What gets applied to farmland in Red River Parish
USGS estimates 56,758 lb of 2,4-d on Red River Parish farmland in 2019, its largest by weight, ahead of Glyphosate (25,854 lb) and Metolachlor & Metolachlor-s (10,974 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 Red River County — and how to grow with it.
We checked the federal record across Red River County — 286 documented sites across 5 of the 9 source types we track.
The most significant on record: 3 Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Active industrial facilities reporting chemical releases to air, water, and land.
There's a meaningful federal record across Red River 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 Red River Parish
Closest first, across Red River County. Listing isn't leaking, and distance isn't exposure.
- Newberg Venture Construction Co Lock & Dam #3Underground Storage Tanks · 0.8 mi
- RR-253Nitrate · 0.9 mi
- RR-252Nitrate · 1.0 mi
- RR-234Nitrate · 2.1 mi
- RR-235Nitrate · 2.3 mi
- International Paper-Coushatta DpotUnderground Storage Tanks · 2.8 mi
- Gay's TexacoUnderground Storage Tanks · 3.0 mi
- COUSHATTA CHIROPRACTIC CLINICBrownfields · 3.1 mi
- RR-199Nitrate · 3.3 mi
- RR-251Nitrate · 3.4 mi
- RR-183Nitrate · 3.5 mi
- RR-182Nitrate · 3.5 mi
6 more sites are on the record inside the same radius. See them on the map
Measured from Red River 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 Red River Parish.
Total Sites
286
across Red River County
Risk Level
Elevated
Highest-severity
3 Toxics Release Inventory facilities
Sources Checked
across Red River County
Severity Distribution
across Red River County
Highest-Severity Sites
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around Red River Parish, Nitrate runs higher than the national average — 192 sites across Red River 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 Red River 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 Red River Parish average
Your land is one point inside Red River Parish
Everything above resolves to Red River Parish as a whole — one PHZM band and one county frost record, read across 249K 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 Red River Parish Average
Red River Parish Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b, averaged across Red River Parish
- ●One soil character for all of Red River Parish
- ●Frost dates read at Red River Parish's scale: Feb 22 to Nov 29
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Red River Parish's 8b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in Red River Parish
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in Red River Parish, Louisiana — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Red River Parish averages can't show:
We read public map data around Red River Parish — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Red River Parish average
How we know this about Red River 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 Red River Parish carries no record of its own, the figure is inherited and labelled — the resolution ledger below names each.
Common questions about Red River Parish
When does frost risk typically end in Red River Parish?
The last hard freeze (28°F) in Red River 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 Red River Parish?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, Red River Parish sees about 280 frost-free days — roughly Feb 22 through Nov 29, per NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals. Tender crops work a shorter one: nearer Mar 15 to Nov 15, about 245 days.
Is the soil safe to grow vegetables in Red River Parish?
The federal record around Red River Parish is a meaningful one — 286 documented sites, mostly Nitrate entries (192), the nearest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.8 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 Red River Parish's scale — its 8b band and its 280-day season. Your yard writes its own version of Red River 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 Red River Parish’s own scale
9 of the readings below were taken at Red River Parish's own scale — its own ~280-day span between 28°F freezes, the 3 most extensive soil series mapped here and 286 documented sites inside its boundary; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- Red River Parish's own USDA hardiness band, zones 8bUSDA PHZM 2023
- Red River Parish's own 28°F hard-freeze dates and its ~280-day span between themNOAA 1991–2020 Climate Normals
- The soil order, drainage, surface pH, and the 3 most extensive named soil series mapped in Red River ParishUSDA NRCS SSURGO
- 286 documented contamination sites inside the county boundary, distance-sorted from its center — the closest Underground Storage Tanks record about 0.8 miles outFederal environmental registers
- Red River Parish's boundary and the 248,947 acres inside itUS Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Which of 1,086 plants clear zones 8b and a ~280-day seasonGrowable Ground crop-matching engine
- Red River Parish sitting wholly inside the South Central PlainsUS EPA Level III Ecoregions
- Open occurrence records documented in Red River Parish for a tracked speciesGBIF derived datasets (CC0 / CC BY 4.0)
- Which agricultural compounds go onto Red River 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 Red River Parish — the ~280 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 Red River Parish's 248,947 acreswhy one lot differs from the next →
- Which of those 286 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 Red River Parishread your own land →