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.

By checking out the USDA zone info for Great Bend it's a good idea to determine when to plant lettuce.

Planting Calendar for Lettuce

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

Since lettuce do well in moderate cold you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant lettuce in Great Bend 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 lettuce and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your lettuce may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your lettuce indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost is on April 15 in Great Bend. You can expect an average low temperature of -5°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Great Bend is just an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Great Bend it frosts late in the year after April 15 so make sure that you are ready to protect your lettuce if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Great Bend

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 Great Bend

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Great Bend.