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 the best time to plant strawflowers is to check out the USDA zone info for East Peoria.

Planting Calendar for Strawflowers

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

You can plant strawflowers slightly earlier in the year because they are barely cold tolerant.

The earliest that you can plant strawflowers in East Peoria 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 strawflowers and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your strawflowers may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your strawflowers indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

In East Peoria the average date of last frost happens on April 15. It might get as low as -15°F during the coldest months of winter.

Just be sure to remember that USDA zone info for East Peoria may not be accurate from year to year and the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in East Peoria it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your strawflowers if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for East Peoria

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 East Peoria

You may be interested in your other planting guides for East Peoria.