One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us determine your gardening schedule is the 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 the best time to plant festuca is to use the USDA zone info for Ontario.

Planting Calendar for Festuca

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

Since festuca do well in moderate cold you can plant them just a bit earlier in the year than more sensitive plants.

The earliest that you can plant festuca in Ontario 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. If you wait any later than that and your festuca may not have a chance to really do well. If you are starting your festuca indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on January 31 in Ontario. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of 30°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Ontario may not be accurate from year to year the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Ontario there is a last frost after January 31 so always be ready to cover your festuca if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Ontario

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 Ontario

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