The Piney Woods spans USDA hardiness zones 8b-9b — a band that supports both cool-season staples and warm-season crops chosen to fit the local frost window.
The sandy, acidic pine-and-hardwood forest belt of East Texas and western Louisiana — the humid South Central Plains, where a long frost-free season of roughly nine months favors heat- and acid-tolerant Southern gardens. Expect okra, black-eyed pea, tomato, and jalapeno to be strong candidates here; the deciding factors on any one parcel stay local — soil, sun, and drainage.
Your yard isn't all of the Piney Woods.
The Piney Woods spans USDA zones 8b-9b, but your parcel sits in exactly one — and slope, tree cover, and low spots nudge it further. 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 Piney Woods — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
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The Piney Woods — the short answer
The Piney Woods: USDA zones 8b-9b, 265–317 frost-free days depending where in it you stand, across 2 states.
- USDA zones
- 8b-9b
- USDA PHZM 2023, aggregated over the footprint
- Shortest season here
- 265 days
- NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020 — Claiborne County
- Counties
- 50
- US Census TIGER/Line 2025
- Region type
- County cluster
- Growable Ground growing-region registry
Region boundary: Growable Ground growing-region registry — curated county clusters, EPA Level III ecoregions, and town clusters drawn finer than any county. The season figure is this region's own record, measured across its 50 member counties, not a state or national average.
Hardiness Zone Range
The Piney Woods is not one growing season
One answer for the Piney Woods averages 50 counties whose growing seasons are 52 days apart — from 265 frost-free days in Claiborne County to 317 in Liberty County. That is the same region, measured the same way, in the same years. Which end of it your land sits nearer decides what finishes before the first hard freeze.
The middle half of 50 counties runs 279–292 days, with a median of 286 days — a 52-day span end to end.
Measured across 50 member counties, each carrying its own 28°F normal. NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020. A member with no own record is absent from the range rather than counted as zero — nothing here is interpolated to the region. Your own site sits somewhere inside this range; a parcel report resolves where.
Where the line runs inside the Piney Woods
The middle half of the Piney Woods runs 279–292 frost-free days, and 23 of its 50 counties sit outside that — 11 on the short side, 12 on the long. A regional planting date describes the middle well and the ends poorly, which is worth knowing before you follow one.
Under 279 frost-free days
11 counties
- Claiborne County · 265 days
- Marion County · 269 days
- Bienville County · 274 days
3 of 11 shown
The end of the region that sets the planting calendar — start seed indoors here and the season stretches to meet the crop.
279–292 frost-free days
27 counties
0 of 27 shown
The middle half of the region, and the part a single regional season describes well.
Over 292 frost-free days
12 counties
- Liberty County · 317 days
- Montgomery County · 306 days
- Tyler County · 305 days
3 of 12 shown
Long enough for a second succession of a quick crop after the first comes out.
Each county is placed by its OWN 28°F frost-free normal (NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020), the same figure its own guide page publishes. Elevation, slope and cold-air drainage move a site within its county as well — which is the part only your address resolves.
What Grows in the Piney Woods
All 5 of the plants below that publish a season requirement clear even Claiborne County’s 265 frost-free days — so on season alone, this grid works at both ends of the region. The 52-day spread still decides how far past this list you can push, and how early you can start.
Plants matched to the Piney Woods' USDA zones 8b-9b, ordered by how much hardiness margin each has across the region — the ones with room to spare at both ends of this band lead. Each links to its full growing profile.
Native Plants of the Piney Woods
Plants the USDA PLANTS Database documents as native and present in all 2 states this region crosses, kept only where the published hardiness range meets the Piney Woods’s USDA zones 8b-9b — closest range match first. Presence is recorded by state, so a plant can be documented across the state and still be scarce in your corner of the region.
The ground across the Piney Woods
The USDA soil survey maps this ground county by county. These are those records weighted by land area across 50 member counties — this region’s own profile, not a state figure.
The ground is predominantly Alfisols, at 41% of mapped acres, followed by Ultisols (39%), Vertisols (8%) and Inceptisols (7%). Eight soil orders appear somewhere inside the footprint, which is the honest reason a regional soil answer only goes so far. The most extensive named soils are Sacul, Eastwood, and Guyton.
35% of those acres are well drained, and another 30% moderately well drained, 14% somewhat poorly drained. Topsoil pH runs 4.2–7.0 between the lowest and the highest county on record. 29% of the footprint is classed prime farmland.
Soil order
Alfisols
Drainage
Well drained
Topsoil pH
4.2–7.0
Hydric soils
18%
Soil changes across a driveway, so which of these your own ground sits on is a parcel question rather than a regional one. Hardin County holds the most wetland ground here, at 52% — soil types explained.
USDA NRCS SSURGO via Soil Data Access
What this means for growing in the Piney Woods
The soil survey reads this ground county by county, and the readings above are those records summed across the Piney Woods. Here is what they mean for a garden here — and the move an experienced grower makes about each one.
Drainage
From county records35% of the mapped acres across the Piney Woods are well drained — ground that drains quickly. That is area-weighted across all 50 of its mapped counties.
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
From county recordsTopsoil across the Piney Woods runs pH 4.2–7.0 — acidic in 49 of its 50 counties.
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
From county recordsAbout 18% of the ground across the Piney Woods is mapped as hydric — wetland — soil. Hardin County carries the most, at 52%.
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
Safe to Grow Here?
What the federal record shows across the Piney Woods — and how to grow with it.
Across the Piney Woods' 50 counties the federal record holds 22,195 documented sites, mostly Underground Storage Tanks (11,012), Nitrate (5,776) and Brownfields (4,371). The heaviest single county is Caddo County, with 2,469.
That is a regional count, not a reading of any one lot — proximity to a documented site is information, not a diagnosis. Open the map outlined to the Piney Woods to see which records sit where you actually grow.
Sources Checked
Summed across the 50 counties in the Piney Woods
A note from Gnorman
What an experienced grower watches for around here
In and around the Piney Woods, two things run higher than the national average across the 50 counties in the Piney Woods — PFAS (213 sites) and Nitrate (5,776 sites). Knowing it is half the work — and it's nothing a thoughtful grower can't plan for.
PFAS: PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are called "forever chemicals" because they do not biodegrade.
Nitrate: Nitrate contamination primarily comes from agricultural fertilizer runoff and failing septic systems.
Test irrigation water source — this is the primary pathway for PFAS to reach garden crops.
Test well water for nitrate if you rely on a private well for irrigation (EPA standard: 10 mg/L).
Sources: EPA, USGS — 1.8M documented sites tracked nationwide across 9 federal source types.
Your land is one point inside the Piney Woods
Everything above resolves to the Piney Woods as a whole — a footprint whose own counties record seasons 52 days apart, and hardiness across zones 8b-9b. Your parcel sits at one point in that range, not in the middle of it. 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 region 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 regional average.
Your Lot vs the Piney Woods Average
Piney Woods Average
- ●USDA Zones 8b-9b, averaged across Piney Woods
- ●One soil character for all of Piney Woods
- ●State-average frost dates
YOUR Parcel
- ✓Your exact zone, not Piney Woods' 8b-9b
- ✓Your SSURGO soil type & pH
- ✓Your sun exposure, cast in 3D
See MY Growing Report
Read your parcel in the Piney Woods
Pull a site-specific report for your exact address in the Piney Woods — soil, sun, drainage, frost risk, contamination, and scored plant recommendations.
Three things about your lot that Piney Woods averages can't show:
We read public map data around The Piney Woods — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources read at your address, not the Piney Woods average
How we know this about the Piney Woods
The boundary: a cluster of neighboring counties. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one, and every figure on this page was measured over the counties inside it rather than borrowed from the state around it.
The datasets: hardiness from the USDA ARS Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023, aggregated across the footprint; the growing season from NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS 1991–2020 28°F normals, read at each member’s own record; boundaries from US Census TIGER/Line 2025; the contamination record from the federal sources named in that beat above; the soil from the USDA NRCS SSURGO survey, read at each member county’s own record and weighted to this footprint by land area. Where a member carries no record of its own, it is absent from the figure rather than filled in.
Common questions about the Piney Woods
What hardiness zone is the Piney Woods?
The Piney Woods spans USDA hardiness zones 8b-9b, aggregated from the USDA Agricultural Research Service Plant Hardiness Zone Map 2023 across the region's counties. Zones reflect average annual extreme minimum temperatures from 1991–2020 data.
How long is the growing season in the Piney Woods?
Measured between 28°F hard freezes, the Piney Woods' counties mostly run 279 to 292 frost-free days, median 286 (NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991–2020, over 50 member counties). That 13-day spread is the honest read — no single season describes 50 counties, and each county guide below carries its own.
When does frost risk end in the Piney Woods?
Across the Piney Woods, the middle half of member counties see their last 28°F hard freeze between Feb 13 and Feb 23 (median Feb 18), and their first fall freeze between Nov 28 and Dec 3. Those are hard freezes, not the last light frost: tender transplants wait for about Mar 11, and elevation decides which end of a 10-day spread you garden in.
What grows well in the Piney Woods?
The Piney Woods' conditions suit plants such as Okra, Black-eyed Pea, Tomato, Jalapeno, Sweet Potato, Live Oak. What actually thrives on any one site still turns on its specific soil, sun, and drainage — we score each plant against the real conditions at your address.
How is the Piney Woods defined?
The Piney Woods is defined here as a curated cluster of 50 neighboring counties that share a growing character. Growing regions have no official boundary, so this footprint is our published one — every county in it is named on this page.
Which states does the Piney Woods cover?
The Piney Woods spans Louisiana and Texas. Each state's full growing guide is linked on this page.
What other growing regions cover the same states?
High Plains, Mississippi Delta, Texas High Plains / Panhandle, Gulf Coast, Blackland Prairie, and Coastal Bend share at least one state with the Piney Woods. Growing regions overlap and interlock — a single address can sit inside more than one, which is why the precise read is always the parcel, not the region.
What this page reads at the Piney Woods’s own scale
6 of the readings below were taken at the Piney Woods' own scale — the zone 8b-9b band across its footprint, a median 286-day season across its 50 counties and 22,195 documented federal contamination records across its 50 counties, 2,469 of them in Caddo County alone; one is borrowed from a wider read, named and linked below.
Measured here
- The USDA hardiness band 8b-9b aggregated across all 50 counties in the footprintUSDA PHZM 2023
- The boundary itself — the 50 counties this region is curated fromGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The growing character that makes this region distinct from the states it crossesGrowable Ground subregion registry
- The 28°F season across the footprint — the middle half of its 50 counties run 279 to 292 frost-free days, median 286NOAA Regional Climate Centers ACIS, 1991-2020
- The federal contamination record over the whole footprint — 22,195 documented federal contamination records across its 50 counties, 2,469 of them in Caddo County aloneEPA, USGS and USDA federal site records
- The soil order mix across the footprint — 41% Alfisols, topsoil pH 4.2–7.0, area-weighted across its 50 mapped countiesUSDA NRCS SSURGO
Inherited from a wider read
- The candidate plant list — all 2 member states' curated sets, merged and filtered to zones 8b-9bfrom Louisiana and Texas
What this page can’t tell you
- Which end of the 13-day range your ground sits at — 279 days at one extreme, 292 at the other, decided mostly by elevationfrost dates explained →
- Which of those soils your own ground sits on — the survey maps them county-wide, and they change across a drivewaysoil types explained →
- The soil pH, drainage, sun hours, and frost pockets on one specific lotwhy one lot differs from the next →
Explore the Piney Woods
State growing guides
Counties in this region
Other growing regions across Louisiana and Texas
A semi-arid shortgrass tableland of deep soils and big sky, where wind, low rainfall, and irrigation shape dryland wheat, sorghum, and resilient gardens.
The flat, deep, dark alluvial bottomland of the lower Mississippi River — extraordinarily fertile cotton, soybean, rice, and sweet-potato ground.
The southern, warmer anchor of the High Plains — the Llano Estacado tableland west of the Caprock Escarpment, where a longer season (frost-free days run near 227 across the Texas counties, well above the multi-state High Plains average) and deep-well Ogallala irrigation define the growing reality. This is the largest contiguous cotton patch in the world around Lubbock (Texas Co-op Power), and, west of the Caprock, the Texas High Plains AVA (TTB, 27 CFR 9.144) that grows roughly 80% of the state's wine grapes. High, flat, and semi-arid: what grows here is what deep-well water and a zone 7a-8a season can coax from it, a distinctly Texan story rather than the dryland wheat and sorghum of the northern High Plains.
The humid, near-frost-free coastal rim of the Gulf of Mexico — long seasons, sandy and alluvial soils, heat, and hurricanes shaping what thrives. (Representative coastal counties, not exhaustive.)
Here the soil, not the zone, defines the garden. The Blackland Prairie is a narrow black-clay belt tracing the I-35 corridor from Sherman through Dallas, Waco, and Temple down to Austin — built on vertisol "black gumbo" that swells sticky when wet, then cracks open as it dries. That shrink-swell clay is alkaline and slow-draining, so where the sandy acid soils of the Piney Woods to the east or the thin limestone of the Hill Country to the west let many gardeners plant straight in the ground, growers here reach for raised beds, gypsum, and heavy organic amendment first. The season runs long — commonly 264 to 300 frost-free days across zones 8a to 9a — but it's the black clay, not the calendar, your beds have to answer to.
The 11 counties of Texas's Coastal Bend, anchored on Corpus Christi and the Nueces estuary, span USDA hardiness zones 9a to 10a with frost-free seasons running 311 to 343 days.