One of the first steps you take when you are estimating your gardening schedule is find your USDA Zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

A way of making a decision about when it's possible to plant echinacea is to check out the USDA zone info for Payette.

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 ok in moderate cold which means that you can start planting them slightly earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Payette 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 grow to maturity. Starting your echinacea indoors is a great way to get them started a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost is on April 15 in Payette. It might get as low as -5°F during the coldest months of winter.

It's important to remember that USDA zone info for Payette may not be accurate from year to year and the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Payette you get surprised by a frost after April 15 so make sure that you are ready to protect your echinacea in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Payette

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-5°F
Highest Expected Low	0°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -5°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 0°F.

Plants to Grow in Payette

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