One of the first steps you take when you are determining 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.

In Vandalia you can determine when it's possible to plant echinacea by using the USDA zone info.

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 a bit earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Vandalia 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. Any later than that and your echinacea may not have a chance to grow to maturity. If you are starting your echinacea indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a little bit earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Vandalia. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -10°F.

Just be sure to remember that USDA zone info for Vandalia is just an average and the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Vandalia last frost occurs after April 15 so make sure that you are prepared to cover your echinacea in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Vandalia

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	-10°F
Highest Expected Low	-5°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -10°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -5°F.

Plants to Grow in Vandalia

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