One of the first steps you take when you are determining 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 USDA zone info for Salem should be used to figure out when it's possible to plant nasturtium.

Planting Calendar for Nasturtium

Frost tolerance for nasturtium:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost has passed.

It's probably a bad idea to plant nasturtium until after all chance of frost has passed because they are not cold tolerant.

The earliest that you can plant nasturtium in Salem is April. However, you really should wait until May if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant nasturtium and expect a good harvest is probably August. Any later than that and your nasturtium may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your nasturtium indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Salem. You can expect an average low temperature of -5°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Salem is just an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Salem there is a last frost after April 15 so make sure that you are ready to cover your nasturtium in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Salem

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 Salem

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