Before planting it is a good idea to find your USDA Zone info to determine your garden schedule. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

A way of figuring out when it's the best time to plant echinacea is to examine the USDA zone info for Elkton.

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 are barely cold tolerant 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 Elkton 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. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your echinacea may not have a chance to fully mature. 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 the last frost has passed is on April 15 in Elkton. It might get as low as 0°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Elkton is just an average the actual date of last frost is different every year. Half of the time in Elkton you get surprised by a frost after April 15 so always be ready to cover your echinacea in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Elkton

Here is the info for USDA Zone 7a.

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

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

Plants to Grow in Elkton

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