One of the best tools that you have as gardeners to help us determine your gardening schedule is the USDA zone info. The zone info helps tell us things like average date of last frost and lowest expected temperature for your area.

The USDA zone info for Groves can be used to figure out when it's a good idea to plant echinacea.

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 slightly earlier in the year than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Groves is February. However, you really should wait until March if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant echinacea and expect a good harvest is probably September. 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

On average all chance of frost has passed is on February 15 in Groves. It might get as low as 20°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Groves is just an average the actual date of last frost is different every year. Half of the time in Groves you get a frost after February 15 so make sure that you are prepared to cover your echinacea in the event of a surprise late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Groves

Here is the info for USDA Zone 9a.

Average Date of Last Frost (spring)	February 15
Average Date of First Frost (fall)	December 15
Lowest Expected Low	20°F
Highest Expected Low	25°F

This means that on a really cold year, the coldest it will get is 20°F. On most years you should be prepared to experience lows near 25°F.

Plants to Grow in Groves

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