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 way of figuring out when you can plant dracaena is to refer to the USDA zone info for Rockford.

Planting Calendar for Dracaena

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

Dracaena are very cold tolerant which tells us that you can get them planted much earlier than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant dracaena in Rockford 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 dracaena and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your dracaena may not have a chance to grow to maturity. Starting your dracaena indoors is a great way to get them started a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Rockford. It might get as low as -15°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Rockford is not always accurate the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Rockford it frosts late in the year after April 15 so be sure to be ready to cover your dracaena if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Rockford

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 Rockford

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