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 way of figuring out when it's a good idea to plant string beans is to examine the USDA zone info for Childress.

Planting Calendar for String beans

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

It's probably a bad idea to plant string beans until after the last frost because they are not cold tolerant.

The earliest that you can plant string beans in Childress 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 string beans and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your string beans may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your string beans indoors.

Last Frost Date

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

Since the USDA zone info for Childress is an average the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Childress you get a frost after April 15 be ready to cover your string beans if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Childress

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 Childress

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