Finding Your Plant Hardiness Zone

If you are relatively new to gardening or have moved to a new area, something you will need to know before you start seeds indoors or out is when your last frost date is.  Nothing could be worse than planting seedlings outside to only have them die because they got too cold.  This has happened to me.  We had a few nice days... I started planting outside before I should have... and I was sad after that.

Click on the map for your Plant Hardiness Zone

 

ZONE	AVERAGE LAST FROST DATE	AVERAGE FIRST FROST DATE
Zone 3	1 May / 31 May	1 Sep / 30 Sep
Zone 4	1 May / 30 May	1 Sep / 30 Sep
Zone 5	30 Mar / 30 Apr	30 Sep / 30 Oct
Zone 6	30 Mar / 30 Apr	30 Sep / 30 Oct
Zone 7	30 Mar / 30 Apr	30 Sep / 30 Oct
Zone 8	28 Feb / 30 Mar	30 Oct / 30 Nov
Zone 9	30 Jan / 28 Feb	30 Nov / 30 Dec
Zone 10	30 Jan or before	30 Nov / 30 Dec
Zone 11	Free of Frost throughout the year.

Armed with this knowledge you can now determine when you can plant outdoors safely.   If you'd like more assistance with when to start seeds indoors and plant outside based on your zone, I found a great site that will send you an email every week to tell you what to plant.  Gotta love that.