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.

One way of estimating when it's possible to plant romaine lettuce is to check out the USDA zone info for Cleveland.

Planting Calendar for Romaine lettuce

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

Since romaine lettuce do well in cold you can plant them a lot earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant romaine lettuce in Cleveland 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 romaine lettuce and expect a good harvest is probably September. Any later than that and your romaine lettuce may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your romaine lettuce indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on March 15 in Cleveland. You should expect an average low temperature of 10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Cleveland is just an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Cleveland you get surprised by a frost after March 15 so make sure that you are prepared to cover your romaine lettuce if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Cleveland

Here is the info for USDA Zone 8a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	March 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	November 15
Lowest Expected Low	10°F
Highest Expected Low	15°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 15°F.

Plants to Grow in Cleveland

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