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.

You can figure out when it's a good idea to plant centaurea in Rensselaer by checking out the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Centaurea

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

Centaurea do well in moderate cold which tells us that you can plant them a little bit earlier than other frost tender plants.

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

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Rensselaer. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of -15°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Rensselaer is not always accurate the actual date of last frost is different every year. Since half of the time in Rensselaer last frost occurs after April 15 be ready to protect your centaurea in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Rensselaer

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-15°F
Highest Expected Low	-10°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -10°F.

Plants to Grow in Rensselaer

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Rensselaer.