Plant hardiness map updated and newly released

I tried growing tomatoes for 3 years and gave up. This year seems to be a fluke. There have been couple of other years where I could have grown a few. My basis for comparison is growing tomatoes in Ohio. I am used to two tomato plants producing more than a family of six could eat.

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so I’m Dsb zone, zone 7a, and sunset 2.

are there any other classifications? and is there any way to stay using these when choosing trees and plants to put in? most places will simply use the USDA zone to label hardiness. @jcguarneri my local stations all show ā€œinsufficient dataā€, not sure if I’m using it correctly.

biggest thing though would be getting plant labels to include things like season length necessary, the zoog (sp) zone and sunset zones, as well as extreme high/low tolerance.

summer is 110F+ here, winter is -10F for at least a few days, every year with out fail. plus the summer drought and winter/spring deluge. high desert

tomatoes can do well here if started indoors very early or short season varieties, same with corn, melons, etc.

we grow apples, grapes and short season peppers really well though.

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Wow. Thanks. I did not realize we get more chill hours then I thought in spring months.

Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
2000 20 20 31 33 46 55 61 64 53 34 23 17 M
2001 17 29 30 34 48 64 62 64 53 32 32 23 M
2002 18 16 18 37 41 54 64 58 62 41 25 26 16
2003 15 28 37 31 50 56 65 68 49 42 23 20 15
2004 17 23 29 33 42 63 64 60 60 37 31 20 17
2005 21 26 31 35 47 60 70 69 61 35 27 22 21
2006 27 23 28 37 39 52 56 66 50 31 29 20 20
2007 24 20 27 24 42 58 58 65 57 51 26 23 20
2008 19 26 28 28 35 58 62 63 50 28 20 23 19
2009 16 15 21 31 53 63 62 58 45 33 30 26 15
2010 14 25 25 38 47 61 58 66 54 36 26 15 14
2011 14 23 26 33 40 56 61 60 50 34 25 25 14
2012 16 14 35 35 48 56 67 62 51 39 24 23 14
2013 25 19 24 40 40 62 66 61 55 35 25 26 19
2014 18 25 25 30 43 57 63 58 57 38 18 26 18
2015 23 20 32 49 43 62 67 68 53 41 31 28 20
2016 24 25 31 36 42 59 67 65 59 37 28 27 24
2017 22 31 22 33 42 56 67 63 60 35 29 25 22
2018 19 24 25 36 41 62 66 68 67 41 29 31 19
2019 27 30 29 37 51 62 M M M M M M M
2020 M M M M M M M M M M M M M
2021 M M M M M M M M M M M M M
2022 21 32 M M M M M M M M M M M
2023 29 38 31 41 45 57 67 60 59 42 33 34 M

Mean 20 24 28 35 44 59 64 63 55 37 27 24 18

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That sounds like either the station is too new to have enough data for some of the summaries, or is one of the rainfall only stations. Occasionally, it’s that the station was discontinued before the time period you’re interested in. Pick the stations with a ball symbol, not the raindrop. If you hover over a station in the list or on the map, it will tell you what it measures along with start and stop dates.

The other potential issue is if there’s a lot of missing data due to malfunctions, operator error, etc, during your period of interest. Usually, increasing the allowable number of missing days will at least get you a number.

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isnt koppen climate more inclusive of those sorts of factors? Im not well versed in it, but it seems a lot more nuanced if less focused on actual numerical rating

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I found this new NPR primer on the hardiness maps nicely laid out for beginners, ie it’s an average, not an absolute limit for selecting plant varieties, and it gives you year by year data for your specific location.

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I saw that this morning! They do such a good job explaining what the map is good for and what it isn’t. I think if everyone on the forum read this, we’d have a lot less confusion about hardiness zones.

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They should pin the thread for newcomers!

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