When to sow pansies in Xiantao

Why these dates

Start indoors twelve weeks before the last frost and plant out four weeks before it - pansies want cool soil and stop flowering in summer heat. For winter and early spring flowers, sow in midsummer and plant out in early autumn, six weeks before the first frost, so the roots establish before the cold.

Hardy to about -15C and flowers whenever the temperature rises above about 4C, which is why it blooms in midwinter in zone 8. Dies out in summer heat above roughly 30C rather than in the cold.

Seed packets and extension guides express timing as weeks either side of the last spring frost, because that is the only reference point that travels. Pansies are timed from 12 weeks before that frost for an indoor start, with planting out 4 weeks before it, and this page simply resolves those offsets against the frost date computed for Xiantao.

Hardiness is not the obstacle here. Xiantao is zone 9a, comfortably inside the range this crop is rated for, so an established plant should come through an average winter without protection.

The median frost-free season here is 277 days, against 90 to 120 days to first flower for this crop counted from planting out. That margin is what decides whether a late sowing is worth attempting.

See every crop timed for Xiantao →