One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us determine your gardening schedule is the USDA zone info. The most important data that the zone info tells us is average last frost and the lowest expected temperature for your area.

A common way of estimating when you can plant echinacea is to look at the USDA zone info for Bowie.

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

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

Last Frost Date

In Bowie the average date of last frost happens on April 15. In the coldest months of winter you should expect an average low temperature of 5°F.

Since the USDA zone info for Bowie is just an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Bowie you get a frost after April 15 be ready to cover your echinacea in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Bowie

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 Bowie

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