Cress · Queens, New York, United States
When to plant cress in Queens
Main outdoor window
1 Mar - 26 Apr
The window this page is built around.
Timed from last spring frost
29 March
In Queens, on your chosen risk.
Ready to pick
1 Apr - 31 Oct
If you plant at the start of the window.
The average last frost. Half of all years are later than this.
Step by step in Queens
Each window is a range, not a single day. Earlier in the range buys you a longer season; later in it buys you a safer one.
Sow direct
1 Mar - 26 Apr
Four weeks before your last frost.
Harvest
1 Apr - 31 Oct
Cress through the year
Against the frost risk in Queens
Why these dates
Sow thickly every week from four weeks before the last frost. It needs no space, no depth and no waiting, so it fills the edges of beds all season.
Damaged below about -3C, but the crop is over so quickly that frost rarely gets the chance to reach it.
Seed packets and extension guides express timing as weeks either side of the last spring frost, because that is the only reference point that travels. Cress are timed for direct sowing 4 weeks before it, and this page simply resolves those offsets against the frost date computed for Queens.
The median frost-free season here is 249 days, against 14 to 21 days to maturity for this crop counted from sowing. That margin is what decides whether a late sowing is worth attempting.
Also in Queens
Other vegetables to time
Growing cress in Queens
When should I plant cress in Queens?
Aim for 1 Mar - 26 Apr in an average year. If you would rather not gamble on the weather, wait until 11 Mar - 6 May - by then frost has finished in nine years out of ten.
When will cress be ready to harvest in Queens?
Expect to start picking around 1 Apr - 31 Oct, based on 14 to 21 days to maturity from the planting date calculated for this location.
How much frost will cress tolerate?
Damaged below about -3C, but the crop is over so quickly that frost rarely gets the chance to reach it.