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 common way of figuring out when it's possible to plant sunflowers is to refer to the USDA zone info for Garden City.

Planting Calendar for Sunflowers

Frost tolerance for sunflowers:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost has passed.

It's probably a bad idea to plant sunflowers until after the last frost when the weather gets warmer because they do not do well in cold weather.

The earliest that you can plant sunflowers in Garden City is April. However, you really should wait until May if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant sunflowers and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your sunflowers may not have a chance to really do well. If you are starting your sunflowers indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a little bit earlier.

Last Frost Date

In Garden City the average date of last frost happens on April 15. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of 0°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Garden City is not always accurate the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Garden City you get surprised by a frost after April 15 so always be ready to cover your sunflowers if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Garden City

Here is the info for USDA Zone 7a.

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

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 0°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 5°F.

Plants to Grow in Garden City

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Garden City.