I live in Beaver Dam, WI (near Madison) This year I planted most of my cool season stuff March 20 which was extremely early. Typically I shoot for the first week of April. With the Spring being so crazy, I haven't gotten my second planting of peas in yet, hopefully tomorrow. Radishes you may be OK yet, they may just get a little warm. They take 3-4 weeks so they should be ready mid June. Beets and carrots you can continue planting all summer. My spinach did not come up at all (4 plants in a 15 foot row) so I filled in the row last week. I would take a chance on lettuce also.

I'm in your area and I planted in mid-March, during the heat wave. I definitely try to get the seeds in the ground by early April.

You'll notice we're having our annual May heat wave now. I wouldn't bother with spinach and radishes, lettuce - a quick growing heat resistant leaf variety might give you a crop, peas take too long, beets and carrots might do all right.

There are many Zone 5 Vegetable Planting Calendars on the web. Most indicate mid-March to mid April (at the latest) for some of those crops. But not all of them get planted at the same time.

Dave

Well, that's the thing about cool weather (and, really, warm weather) crops in the Great Lakes region. You just never know what kind of weather the seasons will bring.

I would hate to make a hard and fast rule about "don't plant cool weather crops after such and such a date" because our weather is so variable, and depends so much on where the jet streams and other weather patterns set up.

There are years that it is so cool all summer it's a real struggle to get warm season crops to perform, but cool season crops thrive even in July and August. And then, other years, its turns hot early and cool season crops are basically finished by early/mid June.

You just really don't know here. I say hedge your bets, plant away, and be prepared to rotate crops and use alternates if the weather doesn't cooperate.

Denninmi - I've having the best cool season ever this year, thanks to the March heat. Everything got off to a racing start and sailed through the April frosts. It was a crapshoot, knowing I could have lost all my transplants. But it paid off. This time.

In Zone 2b, I typically seed spinach first, which I find the most reliably tolerant of cool soils in the 40s. So that goes in early to mid-April although this year they went in late March. It usually takes 10 days to come up. Radishes also get planted around the same time. Peas are slower to germinate and lettuce is not that frost-hardy, so those get seeded late April. I don't do carrots. Beets get seeded early May.

Except the peas, I also plant all those crops in the fall in early August (beets, chard, lettuce) and late August (spinach, radishes).