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.

You should be able to determine when it's a good idea to plant marigold by checking out the USDA zone info for Dowagiac.

Planting Calendar for Marigold

Frost tolerance for marigold:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost when the weather gets warmer.

It's probably not a good idea to plant marigold until after all chance of frost has passed because they do not do well in cold weather.

The earliest that you can plant marigold in Dowagiac 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 marigold and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your marigold may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your marigold indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost is on April 15 in Dowagiac. You can expect an average low temperature of -15°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Dowagiac is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Dowagiac you get surprised by a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your marigold if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Dowagiac

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 Dowagiac

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