One of the first steps you take when you are estimating 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.

The first opportunity to plant garlic in El Dorado can be determined by using the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Garlic

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

Garlic do ok in quite a bit of cold which means that you can plant them quite a bit earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant garlic in El Dorado 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 garlic and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your garlic may not have a chance to really do well. If you are starting your garlic indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

In El Dorado the average date of last frost happens on April 15. It might get as low as -5°F during the coldest months of winter.

It's important to remember that USDA zone info for El Dorado is an average and the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in El Dorado it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your garlic if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for El Dorado

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-5°F
Highest Expected Low	0°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -5°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 0°F.

Plants to Grow in El Dorado

You may be interested in your other planting guides for El Dorado.