One of the first steps you take when you are determining your gardening schedule is find your USDA Zone info. The most important data that the zone info tells us is average last frost and the lowest expected temperature for your area.

A way of determining when it's a good idea to plant monarda is to use the USDA zone info for San Jose.

Planting Calendar for Monarda

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

You can plant monarda a bit earlier in the year because they are barely cold tolerant.

The earliest that you can plant monarda in San Jose 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 monarda and expect a good harvest is probably September. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your monarda may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your monarda indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost is on February 15 in San Jose. It might get as low as 25°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for San Jose is not always accurate the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in San Jose it frosts late in the year after February 15 be ready to cover your monarda if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for San Jose

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 San Jose

You may be interested in your other planting guides for San Jose.