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.

A way of estimating when it's possible to plant echinacea is to refer to the USDA zone info for Ridgefield.

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 one of those plants that can tolerate a tiny bit of cold weather you can plant them a bit earlier in the year than more sensitive plants.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Ridgefield 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. Starting your echinacea indoors is a great way to get them started a little bit earlier.

Last Frost Date

The average date of last frost is April 15 in Ridgefield. It might get as low as 0°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Ridgefield is just an average the actual date of last frost will vary from year to year. Since half of the time in Ridgefield it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your echinacea if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Ridgefield

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 Ridgefield

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