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.

The USDA zone info for Maquoketa should be reffered to in order to estimate when you can plant garden cress.

Planting Calendar for Garden cress

Frost tolerance for garden cress:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost.

It's probably a bad idea to plant garden cress until after all chance of frost has passed because they require warm weather.

The earliest that you can plant garden cress in Maquoketa 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 garden cress and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your garden cress may not have a chance to fully mature. Starting your garden cress indoors is a great way to get them started a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Maquoketa. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of -20°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Maquoketa is just an average the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Maquoketa last frost occurs after April 15 so always be ready to cover your garden cress if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Maquoketa

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-20°F
Highest Expected Low	-15°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -20°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -15°F.

Plants to Grow in Maquoketa

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