One of the first steps you take when you are estimating 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.

You should be able to figure out when it's possible to plant echinacea by using the USDA zone info for Carrboro.

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.

Since echinacea are barely cold tolerant you can plant them just a tiny bit earlier in the year than more sensitive plants.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Carrboro 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 grow to maturity. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your echinacea indoors.

Last Frost Date

On average all chance of frost has passed is on April 15 in Carrboro. You should expect an average low temperature of 5°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Carrboro is not always accurate the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Carrboro there is a last frost after April 15 be ready to protect your echinacea if you have a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Carrboro

Here is the info for USDA Zone 7b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	October 15
Lowest Expected Low	5°F
Highest Expected Low	10°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 10°F.

Plants to Grow in Carrboro

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