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 Clinton should be used to figure out when you can plant penstemon.

Planting Calendar for Penstemon

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

You can plant penstemon a little bit earlier in the year because they are one of those plants that can tolerate a little bit of cold weather.

The earliest that you can plant penstemon in Clinton 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 penstemon and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your penstemon may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your penstemon indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Clinton. You can expect an average low temperature of -10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Clinton is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Clinton you get surprised by a frost after April 15 so just be sure to be ready to protect your penstemon in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Clinton

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-10°F
Highest Expected Low	-5°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -10°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -5°F.

Plants to Grow in Clinton

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