Weather and Gardens

Weather is Controlled by Mother Nature

For a good garden, keep an eye to the sky, and watch the weather. Weather is another very important ingredient to gardening. Too hot, too cold, humid, dry, windy, sunshine and rain. They are all important parts of a successful gardening formula for your plants. consequently, the starting point to your gardening season, is to know what you can plant in your area and when. That’s where Frost Free Dates and Plant Hardiness zones come in.

Weather and Frost Free Dates

Frost free dates are the date of the last frost in the Spring and the first killing frost of the fall for your specific area. The number of frost-free days is the number of days between these dates.

It is important to know the length of the frost-free period when planning your garden. It determines the variety of plants that can be grown in your garden and excludes those that require a longer time to maturity than your area normally experiences.

Armed with this knowledge, you can expand your gardening selection, by planting seeds indoors in advance of the first frost-free date of spring. Of course, this information could help you to properly time buying seedlings from a garden store.

Did you know? One pail of water can produce enough fog to cover 100 square miles to a depth of fifty feet.

Weather and Plant Hardiness

Each individual plant has a minimum winter temperature that it can survive. Plant Hardiness Zones are measured and charted by the USDA. The map above helps you to determine what plants can grow and survive over the winter months in your area.