One of the first steps you take when you are making a decision about 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.

One way of determining when to plant echinacea is to examine the USDA zone info for Wytheville.

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 moderate cold which tells us that you can plant them slightly earlier than other plants that might not handle the cold.

The earliest that you can plant echinacea in Wytheville 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. If you are starting your echinacea indoors then you might be able to get away with starting them a couple of weeks earlier.

Last Frost Date

In Wytheville 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 Wytheville is just an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Wytheville there is a last frost after April 15 be ready to cover your echinacea in the event of a late frost.

USDA Zone Info for Wytheville

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 Low	0°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 Wytheville

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