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 New Milford should be looked at to determine when it's the best time to plant cardinal flower.

Planting Calendar for Cardinal Flower

Frost tolerance for cardinal flower:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost has passed.

You should not plant cardinal flower until after the last frost because they do not do well in cold weather.

The earliest that you can plant cardinal flower in New Milford is April. However, you really should wait until May if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant cardinal flower and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your cardinal flower may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your cardinal flower indoors.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in New Milford. It might get as low as 0°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for New Milford is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in New Milford you get a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your cardinal flower if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for New Milford

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 New Milford

You may be interested in your other planting guides for New Milford.