It’s about 2 weeks until I start germinating some of my plants to go outside. They go out the last week of May, there’s usually a frost near the end of May. Squashes and other long plants don’t do so well here.
So what’s in everyone minds to get going this year? I usually try to get some cucumbers if they can finish in time, as well as tomatoes, peppers, peas, carrots and lettuce.
An early unexpected frost took my peppers and tomatoes last year unfortunately.
What does this mean?
Recently the USDA updated their plant handiness zones.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2023/usda-unveils-updated-plant-hardiness-zone-map/
The USDA updates their grow zones every couple of years (?). Their last update had my town moved from 6B to 6A due to warming temperatures. The plants don’t understand the rating, but what it means is that my area has been trending toward having a longer grow season (time between frosts) for a while now.
For more reading, see: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
I believe it also has to do with frost depth and coldest temperature, that’s more for trees and flowers over typical “garden” stuff though.
Lots of flower bulbs to remove every year here.
Ah, I see. That would make sense. It seems that people always want to try to push the boundary of what they can grow in their region. A neighbor digs up a ton of canna lilies each fall. A friend has a lemon tree in a pot that they bring in at the end of the season. Heck, we have a pretty big jade that we have outside for about half they year…
It would be pretty cool to be able to have some more exotic flowers on our lot, but I guess that wouldn’t make them exotic anymore.