When to Plant Garlic in Wood River, 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 common way of making a decision about when to plant garlic is to check out the USDA zone info for Wood River.


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

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 Wood River 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 really do well. If you are starting your garlic indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a little bit earlier.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Wood River. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of -5°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Wood River is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Wood River you get a frost after April 15 so just be sure to be ready to cover your garlic if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Wood River

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)October 15
Lowest Expected Low-5°F
Highest Expected Low0°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -5°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 0°F.

Plants to Grow in Wood River

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Wood River.