One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us estimate your gardening schedule is the USDA zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

A way of figuring out when it's the best time to plant garden orache is to consult the USDA zone info for Alpena.

Planting Calendar for Garden Orache

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

Since garden orache are one of those plants that can tolerate a little bit of cold weather you can plant them a little bit earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant garden orache in Alpena 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 garden orache and expect a good harvest is probably September. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your garden orache may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your garden orache indoors.

Last Frost Date

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

Keep in mind that USDA zone info for Alpena is just an average and the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Alpena you get surprised by a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your garden orache if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Alpena

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 Alpena

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