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 Waterloo should be reffered to in order to determine when it's a good idea to plant pumpkins.

Planting Calendar for Pumpkins

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

It's probably a bad idea to plant pumpkins until after the last frost because they require warm weather.

The earliest that you can plant pumpkins in Waterloo 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 pumpkins and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your pumpkins may not have a chance to really do well. If you are starting your pumpkins indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

In Waterloo the average date of last frost happens on April 15. You should expect an average low temperature of -20°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Waterloo is an average the actual date of last frost is different every year. Since half of the time in Waterloo it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your pumpkins if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Waterloo

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 Waterloo

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