The USDA Zone info is a great tool for gardeners to help us determine your gardening schedule. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

You will be able to figure out when you can plant garlic by referring to the USDA zone info for Columbia.

Planting Calendar for Garlic

Frost tolerance for garlic:	Very tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 7 weeks before last frost.

Garlic do well in cold which means that you can plant them much earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

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

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Columbia. You should expect an average low temperature of -10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Columbia is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Columbia it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to cover your garlic in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Columbia

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 Columbia

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