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.

A common way of determining when it's the best time to plant purple coneflower is to use the USDA zone info for Charleston.

Planting Calendar for Purple Coneflower

Frost tolerance for purple coneflower:	Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

Purple Coneflower are barely cold tolerant which means that you can get them planted just a bit earlier than more sensitive plants.

The earliest that you can plant purple coneflower in Charleston 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 purple coneflower and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your purple coneflower may not have a chance to fully mature. If you are starting your purple coneflower indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a little bit earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on April 15 in Charleston. You can expect an average low temperature of 0°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Charleston is just an average the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Half of the time in Charleston it frosts late in the year after April 15 so just be sure to be ready to cover your purple coneflower in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Charleston

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 Charleston

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