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.

The earliest that you can plant spearmint in Urbana should be figured out by using the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Spearmint

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

Spearmint do ok in a bit of cold which means that you can plant them earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant spearmint in Urbana 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 spearmint and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your spearmint may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your spearmint indoors.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Urbana. You can expect an average low temperature of -15°F in the coldest months of winter.

Keep in mind that USDA zone info for Urbana is an average and the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Urbana you get a frost after April 15 so make sure that you are ready to protect your spearmint if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Urbana

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 Urbana

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