Before planting it is a good idea to find your USDA Zone info to determine your garden schedule. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

A common way of figuring out when it's the best time to plant echinacea is to examine the USDA zone info for Capitola.

Planting Calendar for Echinacea

Frost tolerance for echinacea:	Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

Since echinacea are one of those plants that can tolerate a tiny bit of cold weather you can plant them slightly earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Capitola is February. However, you really should wait until March if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant echinacea and expect a good harvest is probably September. If you wait any later than that and your echinacea may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your echinacea indoors.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is February 15 in Capitola. You can expect an average low temperature of 25°F in the coldest months of winter.

Always keep in mind that the actual date of last frost is just an average because it is based on the USDA zone info for Capitola and it will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Capitola last frost occurs after February 15 so be sure to be ready to protect your echinacea in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Capitola

Here is the info for USDA Zone 9b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	February 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	25°F
Highest Expected Low	30°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 25°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 30°F.

Plants to Grow in Capitola

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