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

A common way of determining when you can plant echinacea is to use the USDA zone info for Tipton.

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.

You can plant echinacea just a tiny bit earlier in the year because they do ok in moderate cold.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Tipton 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. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your echinacea indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on April 15 in Tipton. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -15°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Tipton may not be accurate from year to year the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Tipton you get surprised by a frost after April 15 so make sure that you are prepared to cover your echinacea in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Tipton

Here is the info for USDA Zone 5b.

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

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is -15°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near -10°F.

Plants to Grow in Tipton

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