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.

A way of figuring out when it's the best time to plant black pepper is to use the USDA zone info for East Moline.

Planting Calendar for Black pepper

Frost tolerance for black pepper:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost has passed.

Black pepper are not cold tolerant which means that you must wait until it warms up after the last frost when the weather gets warmer before you can plant them.

The earliest that you can plant black pepper in East Moline 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 black pepper and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your black pepper may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your black pepper indoors.

Last Frost Date

In East Moline the average date of last frost happens on April 15. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -15°F.

Since the USDA zone info for East Moline is not always accurate the actual date of last frost is different every year. Half of the time in East Moline it frosts late in the year after April 15 so make sure that you are ready to protect your black pepper in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for East Moline

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-15°F
Highest Expected Low	-10°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -10°F.

Plants to Grow in East Moline

You may be interested in your other planting guides for East Moline.