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.

It's a good idea to figure out when it's a good idea to plant garden mums by referring to the USDA zone info for Chatham.

Planting Calendar for Garden Mums

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

You can plant garden mums a little earlier in the year because they do well in moderate cold.

The earliest that you can plant garden mums in Chatham 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. If you wait any later than that and your garden mums may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your garden mums indoors.

Last Frost Date

In Chatham the average date of last frost happens on April 15. You should expect an average low temperature of -10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Remember that USDA zone info for Chatham is not always accurate and the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Chatham it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your garden mums if you have a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Chatham

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6a.

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

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -10°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -5°F.

Plants to Grow in Chatham

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