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.

One way of determining when it's the best time to plant sunflowers is to look at the USDA zone info for Eldon.

Planting Calendar for Sunflowers

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

You should not plant sunflowers until after the last frost because they require warm weather.

The earliest that you can plant sunflowers in Eldon 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. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your sunflowers indoors.

Last Frost Date

In Eldon 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 Eldon is just an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Eldon there is a last frost after April 15 be ready to cover your sunflowers in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Eldon

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 Eldon

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