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

The USDA zone info for Martinsville can be reffered to in order to determine when it's the best time to plant purple coneflower.

Planting Calendar for Purple Coneflower

Frost tolerance for purple coneflower:	Tolerant of a very small amount of frost.
When to plant:	Up to 3 weeks before last frost.

Purple Coneflower do ok in moderate cold which tells us that you can plant them slightly earlier than plants that are more sensitive to the cold.

The earliest that you can plant purple coneflower in Martinsville 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 purple coneflower and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your purple coneflower may not have a chance to fully mature. Starting your purple coneflower indoors is a great way to get them started a few weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

In Martinsville the average date of last frost happens on April 15. You can expect an average low temperature of 0°F in the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Martinsville is just an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Martinsville last frost occurs after April 15 be ready to protect your purple coneflower in the event of one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Martinsville

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 Martinsville

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