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 Orange you can determine when to plant petunias by referring to the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Petunias

Frost tolerance for petunias:	Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

You can plant petunias slightly earlier in the year because they do ok in moderate cold.

The earliest that you can plant petunias in Orange 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 petunias and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your petunias may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your petunias indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

In Orange the average date of last frost happens on February 15. You can expect an average low temperature of 20°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Orange may not be accurate from year to year the actual date of last frost is different every year. Since half of the time in Orange it frosts late in the year after February 15 be ready to protect your petunias if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Orange

Here is the info for USDA Zone 9a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	February 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	20°F
Highest Expected Low	25°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 20°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 25°F.

Plants to Grow in Orange

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