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 determining when to plant asters is to examine the USDA zone info for Cape Girardeau.

Planting Calendar for Asters

Frost tolerance for asters:	Tolerant of some frost.
When to plant:	Up to 5 weeks before last frost.

Asters are moderately cold tolerant which means that you can get them planted earlier than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant asters in Cape Girardeau 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 asters and expect a good harvest is probably September. Any later than that and your asters may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your asters indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost is on April 15 in Cape Girardeau. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of -5°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Cape Girardeau is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Cape Girardeau last frost occurs after April 15 be ready to cover your asters if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Cape Girardeau

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 Low	0°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 Cape Girardeau

You may be interested in your other planting guides for Cape Girardeau.