When to Plant Garden Mums in Cottage Grove, MN

The USDA Zone info is a great tool for gardeners to help us determine your gardening schedule. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

By checking out the USDA zone info for Cottage Grove it's a good idea to figure out when it's the best time to plant garden mums.


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 do well in moderate cold you can plant them just a bit earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

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

The earliest that you can plant garden mums in Cottage Grove is March. However, you really should wait until April 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 August. If you wait any later than that and your garden mums may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your garden mums indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on May 15 in Cottage Grove. It might get as low as -25°F during the coldest months of winter.

Keep in mind that the actual date of last frost is not always accurate because it is based on the USDA zone info for Cottage Grove and it changes from year to year. Half of the time in Cottage Grove last frost occurs after May 15 so be sure to be ready to protect your garden mums if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Cottage Grove

Here is the info for USDA Zone 4b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)May 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)September 15
Lowest Expected Low-25°F
Highest Expected Low-20°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -25°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -20°F.

Plants to Grow in Cottage Grove

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Cottage Grove.