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.

In Decorah you can determine when to plant chard by checking out the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Chard

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

You can plant chard a bit earlier in the year because they do well in moderate cold.

The earliest that you can plant chard in Decorah is March. However, you really should wait until April if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant chard and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your chard may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your chard indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on May 15 in Decorah. It might get as low as -25°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Decorah is just an average the actual date of last frost is different every year. Half of the time in Decorah last frost occurs after May 15 so make sure that you are prepared to cover your chard if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Decorah

Here is the info for USDA Zone 4b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	May 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	September 15
Lowest Expected Low	-25°F
Highest Expected Low	-20°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -25°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -20°F.

Plants to Grow in Decorah

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