One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us figure out 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 figuring out when it's the best time to plant melampodium is to examine the USDA zone info for Lufkin.

Planting Calendar for Melampodium

Frost tolerance for melampodium:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost.

You can not plant melampodium until after the last frost when the weather gets warmer because they are not cold tolerant.

The earliest that you can plant melampodium in Lufkin 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 melampodium and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your melampodium may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your melampodium 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 March 15 in Lufkin. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of 15°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Lufkin is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Lufkin you get a frost after March 15 be ready to protect your melampodium in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Lufkin

Here is the info for USDA Zone 8b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	March 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	November 15
Lowest Expected Low	15°F
Highest Expected Low	20°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 20°F.

Plants to Grow in Lufkin

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