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.

The USDA zone info for Urbandale can be reffered to in order to figure out when it's the best time to plant platycodon.

Planting Calendar for Platycodon

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

Platycodon do ok in a tiny bit of cold which means that you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant platycodon in Urbandale 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 platycodon and expect a good harvest is probably August. Any later than that and your platycodon may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your platycodon indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on April 15 in Urbandale. It might get as low as -20°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Urbandale is not always accurate the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Urbandale you get surprised by a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your platycodon in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Urbandale

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-20°F
Highest Expected Low	-15°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -20°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -15°F.

Plants to Grow in Urbandale

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