One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us figure out 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.

One way of estimating when it's a good idea to plant echinacea is to refer to the USDA zone info for Winterset.

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.

Echinacea do well in a tiny bit of cold which means that you can plant them just a tiny bit earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

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

The last month that you can plant echinacea and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your echinacea may not have a chance to really do well. If you are starting your echinacea indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

In Winterset the average date of last frost happens on April 15. It might get as low as -20°F during the coldest months of winter.

Just be sure to remember that USDA zone info for Winterset is just an average and the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Winterset it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your echinacea if you have a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Winterset

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-20°F
Highest Expected Low	-15°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -20°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -15°F.

Plants to Grow in Winterset

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