One of the first steps you take when you are estimating 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 hardy asters is to examine the USDA zone info for Black Mountain.

Planting Calendar for Hardy Asters

Frost tolerance for hardy asters:	Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

Hardy Asters are barely cold tolerant which tells us that you can get them planted just a bit earlier than more sensitive plants.

The earliest that you can plant hardy asters in Black Mountain 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 hardy asters and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your hardy asters may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your hardy asters indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Black Mountain. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of 0°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Black Mountain is an average the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Black Mountain you get a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your hardy asters in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Black Mountain

Here is the info for USDA Zone 7a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	0°F
Highest Expected Low	5°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 0°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 5°F.

Plants to Grow in Black Mountain

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Black Mountain.