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 Bloomington should be looked at to figure out when it's possible to plant lemon grass.

Planting Calendar for Lemon grass

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

You can plant lemon grass slightly earlier in the year because they do ok in moderate cold.

The earliest that you can plant lemon grass in Bloomington 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 lemon grass and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your lemon grass may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your lemon grass indoors.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Bloomington. You can expect an average low temperature of -15°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Bloomington may not be accurate from year to year the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Bloomington it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your lemon grass if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Bloomington

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5b.

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

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -10°F.

Plants to Grow in Bloomington

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