Sunny Winter Day? Don't Trust Mother Nature or a Groundhog - Let the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map Guide You

Written by Lyn Brooks, Staff Writer

It's February 2nd, and the sun is out, shining in all it's glory. Based on the weather today, it looks like winter is coming to a fast end. Several legendary groundhogs seem to concur with Mother Nature's mood today. According to a news report by NPR, neither the infamous Punxsutawney Phil, nor Staten Island Chuck, or General Beau Lee, saw their shadow, which reportedly means that spring is only two weeks away. So, if you are like me you are probably tempted to get started digging and planting in your garden.

If you live in the upper middle to high latitudes, the following is my best gardening tip for the month of February:

Don't. Trust me, just don't. I know the dirt is calling your name, just as surely as it is mine, but don't give in to your gardening lust! Not yet.

As tempting as warm, sunny days, and elderly groundhogs may be, science is a more trustworthy guide.

While I have seen the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map be off by a couple of weeks, in general, it is a far more reliable guide than local weather trends, or animals, as to whether or not it's safe to begin sowing your favorite plants.

Many gardeners are already well acquainted with the map, which was recently updated in 2012. If not, just find your area on the map and match the color of your area with the table. If you have a broadband connection, you can interact with the map online, or simply enter your zip code to find out your zone.

Most commercial seed packets will tell you when it's safe to plant a specific fruit, vegetable, herb or flower based on your local zone. You can also look up zone and date recommendations for specific plants by conducting an online search.

My garden is located in Zone 6b. Veggie Harvest has a nice Zone 6b Garden Calendar and Graph showing what is safe to start inside and outside throughout the year for my zone. They have recommendations for the other zones as well.

There are several seeds that I will be able to start from seed soon INSIDE, to be set outside and planted later. But, for plants and seeds directly sown in the garden, there is nothing, NOTHING that is SAFE to plant outside right now.

Nothing! No matter what today's sunshine and those groundhogs say!

If the groundhogs are coincidentally correct, and it warms up a bit earlier than normal, if we are very, very lucky, it might be safe to put out a few onion sets towards the end of this month. But, other than that, N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

Unless you just happen to enjoy wasting seeds and killing plants. If you are a serial plant killer and enjoy having a black thumb, go on ahead - plant away!

If, however, you enjoy gardening because you enjoy planting things and watching them grow, keep the following facts in mind: Sunshine and Mother Nature are moody and fickle! Groundhogs lie!


Photo Credit: Flickr, Carly & Art

2016 Garden Resolutions: A New Year and New Garden!

By Lyn Brooks, Staff Writer

It's late January, and in a few short weeks it will be time to plant a new garden. Gardening is really a learning process, one that takes a lifetime to complete. My resolutions and plans for this year's garden, are, of course, based on what did and did not work in past years.

Last year, 2015, was an absolute disaster for my garden. It started with a bitterly cold freeze on February 21st that saw temperatures dip to -24 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. It then warmed up 2 days later to the lower 30's and began to snow, for days, leaving a snow total in excess of 3 feet on the ground, destroying my garage and potting shed. The temperatures dipped again, leaving the snow in place for weeks on end. 

The bitter cold and heavy snows of winter turned into a wet and cool spring, with heavy rain. This was followed by a short but hot summer and then an early and cold fall. After months of fighting with my lender and insurance company over the damages, and then dealing with all of the continued unfavorable weather, I was honestly too worn out to think about planting anything last year. The only plants that survived all of the weather phenomena of 2015 were three single plants - two were strawberries: one a Sequoia and the other an Everbearing Ozark Beauty Strawberry plant- and a lone wild raspberry vine.

Thankfully, each of my strawberry plants sent out numerous runners, and I chose the hardiest 3 or 4 from each plant and set them in the fall. So, assuming they survive the rest of this winter, I should have the beginning of a new strawberry patch in the spring. We'll see if the raspberry cane survives and sends out new shoots for this year in a few weeks as well.

After all of the devastating losses of 2015, I feel almost as though I have a blank slate for this year. So 2016 will be a year of rebuilding. 

Of course, it's not assured that even these three plants will make it through the rest of this winter, even though it seems as though spring must surely be just around the corner. So far, this winter has been bitterly cold, reaching a chilly 9 degrees many nights. We've had some deep snows as well. This past weekend we had a storm system, Winter Storm Jonas, that brought nearly two feet of snow to my area. Is it just me, or have we started seeing more precipitation since the National Weather Service started naming these winter storms?

All of the cold weather has me itching for spring, so that I can get my hands in the dirt! Like all gardeners in my zone, I hope that the groundhog cooperates and warmer weather arrives sooner rather than later. 

In either case, in about 6 weeks, I plan to make my first foray into rebuilding my garden. On or around the Ides of March, and close to my 48th birthday, I plan to set my first bulbs and seeds into the ground. I think I will begin with some easy, low maintenance, cool weather loving vegetables: peas, lettuce, radishes, onion sets, spinach, kale, turnips, beets. and maybe a few hills of potatoes. Keeping my 2016 Garden resolutions sound like a great birthday present to myself!

Once the weather warms, and I begin rebuilding my garden in earnest, I will resume a more frequent writing and posting schedule. While we wait, why not share your 2016 resolutions for your garden in the comments section below?

Photo Credit: Flickr, robinrkc

My Journey to a “Greener” New Year

Many of my friends and relatives are becoming increasingly concerned with how their activities impact our environment. Most of us sort our trash by its recyclable materials and transport it to the appropriate recycling centers. Many of us already use "green," non-toxic, homemade cleaners, such as vinegar, baking soda, and lemon juice for most of our cleaning activities. All of us have already replaced our old, energy hogging light bulbs, set the temperatures up in the summer and down in the winter on our thermostats, installed extra insulation, and installed timers on our hot water heaters to save electricity. Many of us carpool together for trips and have reduced the number of trips that we make to reduce emissions. Several of us already grow a sizeable portion of our own produce and shop local farmer's markets or stores that buy locally grown produce. It would be hard to find lifestyle changes that we could each make to live greener lives. I was in the drive-thru at a local fast food eatery this afternoon thinking to myself, is there anything left to cut or change to reduce my environmental footprint?

I paid for our meal and took the two plastic drink containers, the bag which contained two wrappers for burgers, two containers for fries, the plastic container with a sundae, plastic spoon wrapped in plastic, and napkins and assorted plastic-encased condiments. My children and I eat out a few times a week. Depending on our respective schedules, we sometimes eat out several meals in a day. Even though some of the containers are recyclable and degradable papers and plastics, that's still a lot of waste going into landfills and all of these containers require natural and synthetic materials to make, and the production of these containers releases contaminates into the environment.

I am just one person, and we are just one family, but our green resolution for the upcoming year is to not eat out, anymore, for a whole year. This challenge, with our busy schedules and lifestyles will be difficult, but with planning it is very doable. Achieving this goal will not only help us reduce our carbon footprint to the environment, it will help our waistlines to be thinner if we make healthier food choices, and our wallets will be "greener" as well as the environment from the money that we save by not eating out. If each of us took a closer look at our lives and found ways to reduce not only our personal energy consumption, but our personal overall consumption of finished products, in any form, it would help our environment as well as our budget.