One of the first steps you take when you are making a decision about 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.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Carthage should be figured out by looking at the USDA zone info.

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 can survive in a tiny bit of cold which tells us that you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Carthage 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. If you wait any later than that and your echinacea may not have a chance to really do well. If you are starting your echinacea indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is March 15 in Carthage. You should expect an average low temperature of 10°F in the coldest months of winter.

It's important to remember that USDA zone info for Carthage may not be accurate from year to year and the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Carthage you get a frost after March 15 be ready to cover your echinacea if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Carthage

Here is the info for USDA Zone 8a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	March 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	November 15
Lowest Expected Low	10°F
Highest Expected Low	15°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 15°F.

Plants to Grow in Carthage

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