One of the first steps you take when you are figuring out 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 common way of estimating when it's a good idea to plant echinacea is to use the USDA zone info for Somerville.

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 some cold which means that you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than other frost tender plants.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Somerville 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 really do well. You can get started a couple of weeks earlier by starting your echinacea indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost has passed is on April 15 in Somerville. You can expect an average low temperature of -5°F in the coldest months of winter.

Always keep in mind that the actual date of last frost is not always accurate because it is based on the USDA zone info for Somerville and it can change quite a bit from year to year. Half of the time in Somerville you get surprised by a frost after April 15 so just be sure to be ready to protect your echinacea if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Somerville

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 Somerville

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