Carol from May Dreams Gardens, Indiana (a blog I enjoy very much) reminded me that our last frost date was May 10th. I was certain that I had read that it was April 22 somewhere. So I did a Google search for the real frost date for the Indianapolis area. There are so many dates, how is a person to know which is right? And when am I really supposed to plant those babies that I have nurtured for months out in the elements? I guess it is a matter of chance.
Here is what I found out about the first and last frost dates for the Indy area in my search this morning.
Farmers Almanac 4/22 and 10/20
Purdue University 4/22 and 10/16
Natural Gardening 4/17 and 10/27
Victory Seeds 5/9 and 10/7
USA Gardener 5/19 and 9/28
Lowes 4/15 and 10/5
GardeningCD.com 4/22 and 10/2
Indy Zoo 4/26-30
Floridata.com 4/22
This year the weather has been so crazy, right now I'm thinking the later the better, but if it warms up I may be tempted to go with the earlier date and take my chances. I'll have to wait and see.
3 comments:
Just go with Mothers' Day, Robin, and hope that's enough to placate Mother Nature!
Sometimes we hedge our bets, planting part of the tender plants outside, but still keeping a few in their pots ready to move to the garage. This year we put them all out and my husband had to make frost tents.
Good luck!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Robin... it is confusing. I have never paid attention to any of those April frost free dates. I've lived here my whole life and just plant based on my own experience. I plant containers and annual flowers in early May, but hold off on the vegetable garden until around May 20th!
Thanks Carol and Annie. I don't have a vegetable garden right now, just flowers. I think what I might have to do is go with the early date with some of my coleus, I have about 50 of them and the tallest ones are already touching my lights at the highest setting. So those I will have to do something with soon. The smaller ones can wait to go out. I think the other plants will do fine waiting also. Next year I will plant seeds a bit later, especially the coleus.
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