One of the first steps you take when you are figuring out 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.

In Normal you can figure out when it's possible to plant garden mums by checking out the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Garden Mums

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

Since garden mums are one of those plants that can tolerate a little bit of cold weather you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant garden mums in Normal 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. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your garden mums may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your garden mums indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost has passed is on April 15 in Normal. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -15°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Normal is just an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Normal you get surprised by a frost after April 15 be ready to cover your garden mums in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Normal

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 Normal

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