One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us figure out 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 it's the best time to plant sunflowers is to check out the USDA zone info for Shamokin.

Planting Calendar for Sunflowers

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

Sunflowers require warm weather which means that you must wait until it warms up after the last frost before you can plant them.

The earliest that you can plant sunflowers in Shamokin 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 few weeks earlier by starting your sunflowers indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost has passed is on April 15 in Shamokin. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -10°F.

Remember that the actual date of last frost is not always accurate because it is based on the USDA zone info for Shamokin and it will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Shamokin it frosts late in the year after April 15 so always be ready to protect your sunflowers if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Shamokin

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 Shamokin

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