My blog schedule says that today’s topic is gardening. The arugula died about two weeks ago, and that’s all I have for the monthly update.<\/p>\n
An article in yesterday’s paper said that plant hardiness zones are changing<\/a>. We’re now in 5b, not 5a, which means that the average annual extreme minimum temperature is -15 to -10 (-26.1 to -23.3 C), not -20 to -15 (-28.9 to -26.1 C). (Note the “extreme”. It is not usually anywhere near that cold here.)<\/p>\n This isn’t surprising to me, since I’ve been sort of ignoring the maps on the backs of seed packets since I started my garden a few years ago. But now it’s official. It helps that we’re at the southern end of the zone, almost in 6a (a balmy -10 to -5). I grew up in 9a (20-25 or -6.7 to -3.9 C), which is why my parents have citrus trees and why I find it acceptable to complain about cold weather, snow, and ice. <\/p>\n The new map lets you look up your location by zip code<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a side note, this is quite likely the first thing I’ve written about the Agricultural Research Service since I covered the agriculture beat in journalism school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My blog schedule says that today’s topic is gardening. The arugula died about two weeks ago, and that’s all I have for the monthly update. An article in yesterday’s paper said that plant hardiness zones are changing. We’re now in … Continue reading