When to Plant Strawberries in San Mateo, CA

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.

By checking out the USDA zone info for San Mateo it's a good idea to determine when you can plant strawberries.


Planting Calendar for Strawberries

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

You can plant strawberries earlier in the year because they are one of those plants that can tolerate quite a bit of cold weather.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Legend 
A good time to plant strawberries
Possibly ok, but a risky time to plant strawberries
Probably not a good time to plant strawberries

The earliest that you can plant strawberries in San Mateo 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 strawberries and expect a good harvest is probably October. If you wait any later than that and your strawberries may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your strawberries indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost is on January 31 in San Mateo. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of 30°F.

Just be sure to remember that USDA zone info for San Mateo is just an average and the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in San Mateo it frosts late in the year after January 31 be ready to protect your strawberries if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for San Mateo

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 Low30°F
Highest Expected Low35°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 San Mateo

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