One of the first steps you take when you are figuring out 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 common way of determining when you can plant chard is to look at the USDA zone info for Dayton.

Planting Calendar for Chard

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

Chard do well in moderate cold which tells us that you can get them planted earlier than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant chard in Dayton 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 chard and expect a good harvest is probably August. Any later than that and your chard may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your chard indoors.

Last Frost Date

In Dayton the average date of last frost happens on May 15. It might get as low as -25°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Dayton is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Dayton it frosts late in the year after May 15 be ready to cover your chard if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Dayton

Here is the info for USDA Zone 4b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	May 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	September 15
Lowest Expected Low	-25°F
Highest Expected Low	-20°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -25°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -20°F.

Plants to Grow in Dayton

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