One of the first steps you take when you are estimating 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 making a decision about when it's a good idea to plant gazania is to check out the USDA zone info for Ripley.

Planting Calendar for Gazania

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

Gazania do ok in very little cold which tells us that you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant gazania in Ripley 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 gazania and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your gazania may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your gazania indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Ripley. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of 5°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Ripley may not be accurate from year to year the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Ripley you get surprised by a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your gazania in the event of a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Ripley

Here is the info for USDA Zone 7b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	5°F
Highest Expected Low	10°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 5°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 10°F.

Plants to Grow in Ripley

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