One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us figure out 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.

A common way of figuring out when it's possible to plant lemon grass is to check out the USDA zone info for Schenectady.

Planting Calendar for Lemon grass

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

Lemon grass 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 lemon grass in Schenectady 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 lemon grass and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your lemon grass may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your lemon grass indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

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

Just be sure to remember that USDA zone info for Schenectady is just an average and the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Schenectady last frost occurs after April 15 so be sure to be ready to cover your lemon grass if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Schenectady

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-15°F
Highest Expected Low	-10°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -10°F.

Plants to Grow in Schenectady

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