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.

A way of determining when it's possible to plant oenothera is to examine the USDA zone info for Brainerd.

Planting Calendar for Oenothera

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

You can plant oenothera a bit earlier in the year because they are moderately cold tolerant.

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

The last month that you can plant oenothera and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your oenothera may not have a chance to really do well. If you are starting your oenothera indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on May 15 in Brainerd. You can expect an average low temperature of -35°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Brainerd is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Brainerd there is a last frost after May 15 so make sure that you are prepared to protect your oenothera in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Brainerd

Here is the info for USDA Zone 3b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	May 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	September 15
Lowest Expected Low	-35°F
Highest Expected Low	-30°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -35°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -30°F.

Plants to Grow in Brainerd

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