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.

A common way of estimating when it's a good idea to plant strawflowers is to look at the USDA zone info for Alcoa.

Planting Calendar for Strawflowers

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

You can plant strawflowers slightly earlier in the year because they are one of those plants that can tolerate a tiny bit of cold weather.

The earliest that you can plant strawflowers in Alcoa 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 strawflowers and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your strawflowers may not have a chance to fully mature. Starting your strawflowers indoors is a great way to get them started a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Alcoa. You can expect an average low temperature of 0°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Alcoa is not always accurate the actual date of last frost is different every year. Since half of the time in Alcoa it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your strawflowers in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Alcoa

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 Alcoa

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