Comments on: What does a zone map really tell you?

By: Mary Ann

Mary Ann — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 03:27:07 +0000

Hi there girlfriend. Fantastic, informative, relevant, useful, accurate reporting on your part. I have been whining about the Zone Maps and their devotees for ages. You set the record straight. HOWEVER, for some of us, the Sunset maps need to be identified as such. Our local paper sometimes uses Sunset’s zone map and sometimes the USDA’s but never tells which is which. And this just adds to the confusion. I will link to this on my page. Nice job!

By: Craig Levy

Craig Levy — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:11:36 +0000

Sunset’s zone maps of California are highly accurate and pinpoint most of the micro-climates throughout the state. But their maps, plus all of the others I have seen including the two at the beginning of this post, are too broad in their generalizations for here. There is a long series of high hills starting just south of me that all of the gardeners who live there agree only plants rated zone 4 and lower are hardy there. None of the maps have that detailed accuracy on them. The maps serve me as initial guidelines and jumping points but I’m often left to my own trialing and experimenting.

By: Kim

Kim — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:50:39 +0000

I guess that each gardener has to figure out his/her comfort level with what these yearly averages mean for our gardens. Paul’s findings wouldn’t make me comfortable planting a tree–or a large or slow-growing shrub–that’s only hardy to zone 6 if I were that woman in Iowa. However, I might take a chance on a perennial, cheaper shrub, something I could start from seed with minimal dollar investment.

By: Kathy Purdy

Kathy Purdy — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:40:43 +0000

Thank you, Paul, for the information on how to find the high and low temperatures for a given locality. That will certainly help any gardener who hasn’t been keeping his/her own records.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:32:11 +0000

People can go to http://www.wunderground.com and do a custom search for their highs and lows for the past “x” years. I spoke with a woman this morning in Iowa who swore she was zone 4 (Ankeny, IA). I checked her low temperatures for the past 7 years and her all-time low was 0F. Zero Fahrenheit is zone 7. I know she won’t stay zone 7, but she surely isn’t zone 4 at -30F. We have armadilloes in Nebraska now, if you need further evidence that Al Gore is correct.

By: Steve Davis

Steve Davis — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 03:43:33 +0000

Three words:

“An Inconvenient Truth”

There will be microclimate effects of climate change that do not result in overall warming in specific locales, but overall, the predictable seasonal patterns that we have relied on will disappear and be replaced by a more chaotic situation that will likely result in loss of native flora and fauna.

Say bye to polar bears and a lot of other beautiful aspects of this earth.

And of course don’t ever think that humans filling the atmosphere with pollution is the cause of it.

After all, Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush are smarter than the 85% of statured scientists who agree that climate change is human-caused and is accelerating faster than expected.

By: Kathy Purdy

Kathy Purdy — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 22:17:01 +0000

Jenn, if you poke around the Arbor Day website you will finally get to this page which says (among other things) ". . . global warming is underway. Tree planting is among the positive actions that people can take to reverse the trend." Of course it's a coincidence that you are reading a website that makes money selling trees. And I agree about it being ill-advised. Just because we've been having warmer winters does not at all mean we are guaranteed to have them in the future. It only takes a couple of nights of too cold weather to ruin some very expensive trees. If people are going to play the hardiness game, they should follow the same principles they would follow at a casino: don't put anymore on the table (or in the ground) than you can stand to lose.

By: Kathy Purdy

Kathy Purdy — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 22:05:36 +0000

Kim, perhaps you can Google “chilling requirement apples” or whatever fruit you are particularly concerned about. Or maybe contact the local cooperative extension.

Yes! That was really the point behind the post: if you are keeping good records of your own, this Arbor Day map wouldn’t have surprised you.

By: Kim

Kim — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:00:14 +0000

Good points, Kathy. It seems like we’re in another “El Nino” pattern here in the Cleveland area, much like the 1997/1998 winter. I was in college in Dayton then, but I wonder if anyone who gardened here could tell me whether fruit production was down in the summer/fall of 1998 as a result of that mild winter.

You know, it is times like these, when I have questions about the past, that I really appreciate the value of bothering to keep a detailed garden journal for future reference.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:07:16 +0000

Oo. Good post. I had not been aware of the doubled zone maps in the past. It seemed really strange to me that the Arbor folks would put so much time into a product that will encourage folks to plant things that will fail. (In My Humble*cough* Opinion)

I am NOT in zone 6. I am in zone 5, in a climate that gets very little consistant snow cover in winter and might be seen as zone 4 in some years. Encouraging me to plant in zone 6 will just bring grief, and then anger. Doesn’t make sense to me…

And your comment on the warmer winters in the past is interesting. I don’t think we had so much loss of mass at the ice caps in those years, tho, so this is a new and riveting equation we find ourselves living through. Interesting times, indeed!