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.

In Ephrata you can figure out when it's the best time to plant runner beans by checking out the USDA zone info.

Planting Calendar for Runner beans

Frost tolerance for runner beans:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost.

Since runner beans do not do well in cold weather you really should wait until after the last frost when the weather gets warmer before you can plant them.

The earliest that you can plant runner beans in Ephrata is April. However, you really should wait until May if you don't want to take any chances.

The last month that you can plant runner beans and expect a good harvest is probably August. You probably don't want to wait any later than that or else your runner beans may not have a chance to grow to maturity. You can get started a few weeks earlier by starting your runner beans indoors.

Last Frost Date

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

Since the USDA zone info for Ephrata is an average the actual date of last frost changes from year to year. Since half of the time in Ephrata it frosts late in the year after April 15 be ready to cover your runner beans if you have one of those late frosts.

USDA Zone Info for Ephrata

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 Ephrata

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