Cress · Zaoyang, Hubei, China
When to plant cress in Zaoyang
Main outdoor window
10 Feb - 7 Apr
The window this page is built around.
Timed from last spring frost
10 March
In Zaoyang, 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 Zaoyang
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
10 Feb - 7 Apr
Four weeks before your last frost.
Harvest
1 Apr - 31 Oct
Cress through the year
Against the frost risk in Zaoyang
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 Zaoyang.
The median frost-free season here is 262 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 Zaoyang
Other vegetables to time
Growing cress in Zaoyang
When should I plant cress in Zaoyang?
Aim for 10 Feb - 7 Apr in an average year. If you would rather not gamble on the weather, wait until 22 Feb - 19 Apr - by then frost has finished in nine years out of ten.
When will cress be ready to harvest in Zaoyang?
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.