One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us figure out your gardening schedule is the USDA zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

You can determine when it's possible to plant garlic in Mendota by looking at the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Garlic

Frost tolerance for garlic:	Very tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 7 weeks before last frost.

Garlic do ok in a bit of cold which tells us that you can plant them quite a bit earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

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

Last Frost Date

In Mendota the average date of last frost happens on April 15. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of -15°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Mendota is an average the actual date of last frost is different every year. Half of the time in Mendota you get a frost after April 15 so just be sure to be ready to protect your garlic if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Mendota

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 Mendota

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