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 Nashville should be looked at to determine when it's possible to plant petunias.

Planting Calendar for Petunias

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

Since petunias are one of those plants that can tolerate a tiny bit of cold weather you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than more sensitive plants.

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

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on March 15 in Nashville. You can expect an average low temperature of 10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Nashville is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Nashville you get a frost after March 15 be ready to protect your petunias in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Nashville

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 Nashville

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