One of the first steps you take when you are making a decision about 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.

One way of making a decision about when it's possible to plant strawflowers is to examine the USDA zone info for Santa Cruz.

Planting Calendar for Strawflowers

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

Since strawflowers do ok in moderate cold you can plant them slightly earlier in the year than more sensitive plants.

The earliest that you can plant strawflowers in Santa Cruz 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 strawflowers and expect a good harvest is probably September. Any later than that and your strawflowers may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your strawflowers indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on February 15 in Santa Cruz. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of 25°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Santa Cruz may not be accurate from year to year the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Santa Cruz there is a last frost after February 15 be ready to cover your strawflowers in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Santa Cruz

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 Santa Cruz

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Santa Cruz.