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

One way of figuring out when to plant echinacea is to examine the USDA zone info for Lexington.

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 moderate cold 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 Lexington 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 grow to maturity. Starting your echinacea indoors is a great way to get them started a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost when the weather gets warmer is on April 15 in Lexington. You should expect an average low temperature of -10°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Lexington is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Half of the time in Lexington last frost occurs after April 15 so make sure that you are prepared to protect your echinacea in the event of a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Lexington

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 Lexington

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