When to Plant Garlic in Shorewood, IL

One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us determine 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.

A way of determining when it's the best time to plant garlic is to refer to the USDA zone info for Shorewood.


Planting Calendar for Garlic

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

Garlic do well in pretty solid cold which means that you can plant them much earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Legend 
A good time to plant garlic
Possibly ok, but a risky time to plant garlic
Probably not a good time to plant garlic

The earliest that you can plant garlic in Shorewood 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. Any later than that and your garlic may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your garlic indoors.

Last Frost Date

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

Always keep in mind that the actual date of last frost is just an average because it is based on the USDA zone info for Shorewood and it changes from year to year. Half of the time in Shorewood you get surprised by a frost after April 15 so just be sure to be ready to cover your garlic in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Shorewood

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 Shorewood

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