When to Plant Echinacea in Cleveland, OH

Before planting it is a good idea to find your USDA Zone info to figure out 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 making a decision about when it's possible to plant echinacea is to check out the USDA zone info for Cleveland.


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 are one of those plants that can tolerate a tiny bit of cold weather which means that you can plant them slightly earlier than other frost tender plants.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Legend 
A good time to plant echinacea
Possibly ok, but a risky time to plant echinacea
Probably not a good time to plant echinacea

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Cleveland 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 fully mature. If you are starting your echinacea indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

On average the last frost is on April 15 in Cleveland. In the coldest months of winter you can expect an average low temperature of -5°F.

Keep in mind that USDA zone info for Cleveland may not be accurate from year to year and the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Cleveland it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to protect your echinacea in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Cleveland

Here is the info for USDA Zone 6b.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)April 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)October 15
Lowest Expected Low-5°F
Highest Expected Low0°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 0°F.

Plants to Grow in Cleveland

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