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.

The USDA zone info for Martinez should be reffered to in order to determine when it's a good idea to plant garlic.

Planting Calendar for Garlic

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

Since garlic are very cold tolerant you can plant them a lot earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant garlic in Martinez 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 garlic and expect a good harvest is probably October. 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 is on February 15 in Martinez. It might get as low as 25°F during the coldest months of winter.

Always keep in mind that USDA zone info for Martinez may not be accurate from year to year and the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Martinez there is a last frost after February 15 be ready to cover your garlic if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Martinez

Here is the info for USDA Zone 9b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	February 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	25°F
Highest Expected Low	30°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 25°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 30°F.

Plants to Grow in Martinez

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