I don’t. My zone has gone from Z6 to Z7. For over a decade I tried to grow numerous varieties of Apricots rated for Z7 with little success. Trees didn’t die, just no or little fruit. I’m sticking with my old zone…Z6.
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I was already going by the zone I was adjusted to. I’m supposed to be 5A but have felt for the last 3 years that I’m more like a 5B and borderline 6A. The new map affirmed by suspicion that I’m in 5B. I have family that are about 10 miles to the NE and their plants follow a completely different timeline than mine. They always start waking up about 1-2 weeks after mine. My ground was unfrozen almost a month before theirs this year! USDA says they’re 5A and that seems to line up!
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My zone didn’t change on the new map. I’ve always focused on growing apples and pears for 3b instead of 4a, and will continue to do so. This area had the coldest winter on record overall in over 100 years just a few years ago. Water lines 8’ deep were freezing.
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Just yesterday I was asked what zone I’m in and I said it didn’t matter and according to Bob Randall who wrote a great book on the Houston area zones have been kind of thrown out the window and you should go based on other indicators because weather has been wacky. We’re getting freezes every year and crazy cold weather and it’s coming late, but on the other hand our summers have been hotter than ever with last year having over 100° temperatures with no rain for over a month.
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That is something. Had no idea pipes that deep would be an issue.
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No. I got moved from 6b to 7a. 7a is supposed to average around 0. A few years ago we hit -12. 4 out of the last 5 years we’ve hit -4 to -12. The new USDA map going off of averages is going to get a lot of people burned when they buy plants rated for zone 7. While we understand the map is based on averages, not extreme events, the average gardener doesn’t know that their zone 7 plants are going to die back to the ground at best when it hits -10 here, which is does pretty regularly lately. What would be much more helpful is an extreme temperature map that shows the extreme lows and highs over the last 10, 20, 30, 50, and 100 years.
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When it’s -20 to -30 for weeks and weeks (and weeks) and there is only a few inches of snow to insulate the ground, the frost goes deep. Frost was still deep in my reed canary grass swamp the first week of June that year.
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Exactly this. If the plant you are planting will die if it goes below the “minimum” temperature for your zone it will have a 50% chance of dying every year, obviously that plant isn’t hardy to the area if it dies 50% of winters. So you would need to know what the person writing the zone range means when they say “hardy to Zx”. Does that mean the plant is hardy to that minimum temperature (bad definition used by nurseries to get extra people to buy the plant) or does it mean that the plant will survive 80% of winters there? All of this is ignoring microclimates, which are maybe more important than the actually USDA zone
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I always TRY to get one zone lower than what my zone is. We get such swings in temps during the winter that it goes lower than our " recommended" zone.
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I’m a zone pusher and it has paid off, mostly. Many Camellias, Asian persimmons, special figs were all considered risky here not that long ago, but less so now. I rolled the dice and got in early. Doesn’t hurt to have a big body of water nearby.
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I moved to my current home 20+ years ago when it was listed as a solid 4, and my experience certainly bore that out. We are now listed as zone 5, which is in complete agreement with my own records and experience.
Ad extremis, we would be more likely to experience a ‘4b’ winter than a zone ‘6’ summer, so I think we’ll be here for quite some time. Remember, ‘degree days’ matter too.
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last winter was equivalent of a z5 winter . this ones a z6. 3 winters ago we got 3 record breaking -40- temps. im trialing some z5 stuff but not putting many as i know any time i could lose them. if i don’t, great! i generally grow z4 and 3 hardy stuff i know will survive our worst record temps.
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I try to play it safe and stay with hardy stuff. The hardiness ratings for any given item seem to vary with different nurseries. Then I have my hopefuls, which may get a harvest only after mild winters. After you lose enough stuff, there is less temptation to do zone pushing.
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Zones naturally change. Every year isn’t perfect.
One year I,'m Z8a(normal)then a mild winter can be Z8b or Z9.
The last 10 years,I must admit,has bounced around more than the previous 30 years,and if this continues,it just makes it a pain in the you know what,to get consistent crops.
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The hardiness zone is just a general guideline about whether a given plenty will make it through the winter. That doesn’t tell you anything about whether notoriously early bloomers like apricots will produce fruit for you. That’s more a factor of how quickly spring progresses. They do great on the West Coast where you don’t really get late cold snaps. Eat of the Rockies, it’s a serious roll of the dice whether the blooms will make it in any given year. But the tree will probably survive the zone winter it’s rated for.
So yes, I do use the adjusted hardiness. I only use it for what it’s meant to tell me, though.
@greendumb that’s not how zones work. It’s not trying to tell you what to expect in any given winter. It’s an average of previous low temps. This is where people get into trouble with zones. They see the minimum temperature for a zone, then compare it to the lowest temp a given tree has survived and think they’re all set. In some places they might be fine, but in most places the year-to-year variation around that average probably includes much lower temps
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My view is weather is all local… if you have a thermometer it’s not hard to keep track of what your lowest lows are every year and then you know what zone your yard is in. I got moved from 7A to 7B (and five miles from 8A) but we had a low in the 0-5F this last winter. So I’m still in 7A as far as I am concerned.
My understanding of how these zones are calculated is they take the lowest low recorded for each year in the last 30 years, and average those 30 numbers (the mean, not the median?). One fundamental problem with this for gardeners is that the weather can vary a lot from year to year (more so in some places than others), and only one bad winter will do plants in. I would personally prefer if they took those 30 years, took the five coldest of those 30, and averaged those together.
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We zone-pushers will pay the price at some point and see what gets just knocked back vs knocked out.
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I tried pushing all types of figs here. All failure.
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Low cordon is your friend!
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