When to Plant Garden Mums in Elmira, NY

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

You can determine when you can plant garden mums in Elmira by checking out the USDA zone info.


Planting Calendar for Garden Mums

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

Garden Mums do well in moderate cold which tells us that you can plant them a little bit earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

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 Elmira 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 garden mums and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your garden mums may not have a chance to grow to maturity. 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 April 15 in Elmira. You can expect an average low temperature of -10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Elmira is not always accurate the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Elmira last frost occurs after April 15 so make sure that you are prepared to cover your garden mums if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Elmira

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 Elmira

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