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.

In Mission Viejo you can figure out when it's the best time to plant petunias by reviewing 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.

Petunias do ok in moderate cold which means that you can get them planted just a bit earlier than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant petunias in Mission Viejo 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. Any later than that and your petunias may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your petunias indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on January 31 in Mission Viejo. It might get as low as 35°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Mission Viejo is not always accurate the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Mission Viejo it frosts late in the year after January 31 be ready to protect your petunias if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Mission Viejo

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 Mission Viejo

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Mission Viejo.