One of the first steps you take when you are determining your gardening schedule is find your USDA Zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

In Cortland you can figure out when it's possible to plant garlic by using the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Garlic

Frost tolerance for garlic:	Very tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 7 weeks before last frost.

Garlic are one of those plants that can tolerate quite a bit of cold weather which tells us that you can get them planted much earlier than more sensitive plants.

The earliest that you can plant garlic in Cortland is February. However, you really should wait until March if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant garlic and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your garlic may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your garlic indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost has passed is on April 15 in Cortland. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -10°F.

Remember that the actual date of last frost is an average because it is based on the USDA zone info for Cortland and it changes from year to year. Half of the time in Cortland it frosts late in the year after April 15 so be sure to be ready to cover your garlic if you have a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Cortland

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-10°F
Highest Expected Low	-5°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -10°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -5°F.

Plants to Grow in Cortland

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Cortland.