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.

A common way of figuring out when it's a good idea to plant eggplants is to refer to the USDA zone info for Winter Park.

Planting Calendar for Eggplants

Frost tolerance for eggplants:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost.

Since eggplants do not do well in cold weather you must wait until after all chance of frost has passed before you can plant them.

The earliest that you can plant eggplants in Winter Park is March. However, you really should wait until April if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant eggplants and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your eggplants may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your eggplants indoors.

Last Frost Date

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

Since the USDA zone info for Winter Park is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Winter Park there is a last frost after February 15 be ready to protect your eggplants in the event of a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Winter Park

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 Winter Park

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Winter Park.