One of the first steps you take when you are getting a good idea 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.

It's a good idea to figure out when you can plant festuca by looking at the USDA zone info for Spirit Lake.

Planting Calendar for Festuca

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

Festuca do well in moderate cold which means that you can get them planted earlier than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant festuca in Spirit Lake 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 festuca and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your festuca may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your festuca indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on April 15 in Spirit Lake. It might get as low as -20°F during the coldest months of winter.

Remember that the actual date of last frost is just an average because it is based on the USDA zone info for Spirit Lake and it is different every year. Since half of the time in Spirit Lake you get a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your festuca in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Spirit Lake

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-20°F
Highest Expected Low	-15°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -20°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -15°F.

Plants to Grow in Spirit Lake

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Spirit Lake.