One of the first steps you take when you are estimating 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.

The USDA zone info for Madison should be reffered to in order to estimate when it's possible to plant garden mums.

Planting Calendar for Garden Mums

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

Garden Mums tend to make it in a little bit of cold which tells us that you can plant them just a bit earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant garden mums in Madison 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 garden mums and expect a good harvest is probably September. Any later than that and your garden mums may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your garden mums indoors.

Last Frost Date

In Madison the average date of last frost happens on April 15. You can expect an average low temperature of 5°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Madison is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Madison last frost occurs after April 15 so be sure to be ready to protect your garden mums if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Madison

Here is the info for USDA Zone 7b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	5°F
Highest Expected Low	10°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 10°F.

Plants to Grow in Madison

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