One of the first steps you take when you are making a decision about 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.

A common way of determining when it's possible to plant pincushion flower is to examine the USDA zone info for San Marcos.

Planting Calendar for Pincushion Flower

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

You can plant pincushion flower a little earlier in the year because they do well in moderate cold.

The earliest that you can plant pincushion flower in San Marcos is February. However, you really should wait until March if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant pincushion flower and expect a good harvest is probably September. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your pincushion flower may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your pincushion flower indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost has passed is on March 15 in San Marcos. You can expect an average low temperature of 15°F in the coldest months of winter.

Just be sure to remember that the actual date of last frost is just an average because it is based on the USDA zone info for San Marcos and it can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in San Marcos there is a last frost after March 15 be ready to cover your pincushion flower in the event of a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for San Marcos

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 San Marcos

You may be interested in your other planting guides for San Marcos.