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.

One way of estimating when it's possible to plant flowering kale is to examine the USDA zone info for Houston.

Planting Calendar for Flowering Kale

Frost tolerance for flowering kale:	Tolerant of some frost.
When to plant:	Up to 5 weeks before last frost.

Flowering Kale do well in moderate cold which means that you can get them planted earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant flowering kale in Houston is January. However, you really should wait until February if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant flowering kale and expect a good harvest is probably October. Any later than that and your flowering kale may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your flowering kale indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on February 15 in Houston. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of 20°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Houston is just an average the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Houston last frost occurs after February 15 be ready to protect your flowering kale if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Houston

Here is the info for USDA Zone 9a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	February 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	20°F
Highest Expected Low	25°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 20°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 25°F.

Plants to Grow in Houston

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