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.

A way of estimating when to plant thyme is to consult the USDA zone info for Barre.

Planting Calendar for Thyme

Frost tolerance for thyme:	Very tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 7 weeks before last frost.

Thyme do well in cold which tells us that you can plant them a quite a bit earlier than other frost tender plants.

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

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on May 15 in Barre. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -25°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Barre is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Barre it frosts late in the year after May 15 so make sure that you are prepared to protect your thyme if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Barre

Here is the info for USDA Zone 4b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	May 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	September 15
Lowest Expected Low	-25°F
Highest Expected Low	-20°F

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

Plants to Grow in Barre

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