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.

One way of figuring out when it's possible to plant monarda is to refer to the USDA zone info for Williamston.

Planting Calendar for Monarda

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

Monarda do ok in moderate cold which means that you can get them planted just a bit earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant monarda in Williamston 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 monarda and expect a good harvest is probably August. Any later than that and your monarda may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your monarda indoors.

Last Frost Date

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

Since the USDA zone info for Williamston is just an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Williamston last frost occurs after March 15 so just be sure to be ready to protect your monarda if you have a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Williamston

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 Williamston

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