One of the first steps you take when you are figuring out 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.

A common way of determining when it's possible to plant festuca is to look at the USDA zone info for Carlsbad.

Planting Calendar for Festuca

Frost tolerance for festuca:	Tolerant of some frost.
When to plant:	Up to 5 weeks before last frost.

Festuca are moderately cold tolerant which tells us that you can plant them earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

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

The last month that you can plant festuca and expect a good harvest is probably October. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your festuca may not have a chance to fully mature. Starting your festuca indoors is a great way to get them started a little bit earlier.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is January 31 in Carlsbad. You should expect an average low temperature of 30°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Carlsbad is just an average the actual date of last frost is different every year. Since half of the time in Carlsbad there is a last frost after January 31 be ready to cover your festuca in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Carlsbad

Here is the info for USDA Zone 10a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	January 31
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	30°F
Highest Expected Low	35°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 30°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 35°F.

Plants to Grow in Carlsbad

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