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.

A common way of making a decision about when it's the best time to plant sunflowers is to examine the USDA zone info for Ephrata.

Planting Calendar for Sunflowers

Frost tolerance for sunflowers:	Not tolerant of frost.
When to plant:	After the last frost when the weather gets warmer.

Since sunflowers are not cold tolerant it's necessary to wait until after all chance of frost has passed before you can plant them.

The earliest that you can plant sunflowers 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 sunflowers and expect a good harvest is probably August. If you wait any later than that and your sunflowers may not have a chance to really do well. You can get started a little bit earlier by starting your sunflowers indoors.

Last Frost Date

In Ephrata the average date of last frost happens on April 15. It might get as low as -5°F during the coldest months of winter.

Since the USDA zone info for Ephrata is an average the actual date of last frost can change quite a bit from year to year. Since half of the time in Ephrata you get surprised by a frost after April 15 be ready to protect your sunflowers if you have a late frost.

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.