One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us determine your gardening schedule is the USDA zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

You can determine when it's a good idea to plant garden cress in Raleigh by looking at the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Garden cress

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

Since garden cress require warm weather it is necessary to wait until after the last frost when the weather gets warmer before you can plant them.

The earliest that you can plant garden cress in Raleigh 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. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your garden cress may not have a chance to fully mature. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your garden cress indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost has passed is on April 15 in Raleigh. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of 5°F.

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

USDA Zone Info for Raleigh

Here is the info for USDA Zone 7b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	5°F
Highest Expected Low	10°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 5°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 10°F.

Plants to Grow in Raleigh

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