One of the first steps you take when you are making a decision about 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.

A common way of estimating when to plant sunflowers is to examine the USDA zone info for De Soto.

Planting Calendar for Sunflowers

Frost tolerance for sunflowers:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost.

It's a bad idea to plant sunflowers until after the last frost because they do not do well in cold weather.

The earliest that you can plant sunflowers in De Soto is April. However, you really should wait until May if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant sunflowers and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your sunflowers may not have a chance to fully mature. If you are starting your sunflowers indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a little bit earlier.

Last Frost Date

In De Soto the average date of last frost happens on April 15. It might get as low as -10°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for De Soto is not always accurate the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in De Soto it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your sunflowers if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for De Soto

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-10°F
Highest Expected Low	-5°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -10°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -5°F.

Plants to Grow in De Soto

You may be interested in your other planting guides for De Soto.