One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us determine 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 estimating when you can plant gerbera is to examine the USDA zone info for Lafayette.

Planting Calendar for Gerbera

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

Gerbera do ok in very little cold which means that you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant gerbera in Lafayette 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 gerbera and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your gerbera may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your gerbera indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on April 15 in Lafayette. It might get as low as 0°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Lafayette is just an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Lafayette it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your gerbera in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Lafayette

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 Lafayette

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