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.

One way of figuring out when it's a good idea to plant monarda is to examine the USDA zone info for Wapato.

Planting Calendar for Monarda

Frost tolerance for monarda:	Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

You can plant monarda just a tiny bit earlier in the year because they do ok in moderate cold.

The earliest that you can plant monarda in Wapato 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 monarda and expect a good harvest is probably August. Any later than that and your monarda may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your monarda 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 April 15 in Wapato. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -5°F.

Keep in mind that USDA zone info for Wapato is an average and the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Wapato it frosts late in the year after April 15 so just be sure to be ready to protect your monarda in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Wapato

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-5°F
Highest Expected Low	0°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 0°F.

Plants to Grow in Wapato

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