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.

One way of determining when it's possible to plant gaillardia is to check out the USDA zone info for Fountain Valley.

Planting Calendar for Gaillardia

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

Gaillardia do well in a tiny bit of cold which tells us that you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant gaillardia in Fountain Valley 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 gaillardia and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your gaillardia may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your gaillardia indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on January 31 in Fountain Valley. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of 35°F.

Keep in mind that the actual date of last frost is just an average because it is based on the USDA zone info for Fountain Valley and it will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Fountain Valley it frosts late in the year after January 31 so always be ready to protect your gaillardia if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Fountain Valley

Here is the info for USDA Zone 10b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	January 31
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	35°F
Highest Expected Low	40°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 35°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 40°F.

Plants to Grow in Fountain Valley

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Fountain Valley.