USDA Updates Map

I guess I can plant figs now because the usda says so.

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No, parts of the UK are not hotter than south Georgia!
But they donā€™t get colder though.

(But, Scottish highlands being in zone 7? I thought they had a little ice up there in summer even. Evidently it donā€™t get colder there than Atlanta Georgia?)

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That map above was a very old one, on the newer map thereā€™s only a very small pocket of zone 7b in Scotland, mostly itā€™s zones 8 to 10:

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Besides currants, Scotland has a successful young Honeyberry farming taking place.

I did realize they have some palm trees on the southern coast.

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Palms are fairly common here.

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Also here in Seattle! Though only a few species make it through the test winters reliably.

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If I never saw another Saw Palmetto again it would be too soon. Or the bums and druggies that trample on your land to illegally harvest the berries. They wonder about like zombies trying to cash in. A real pain since we usually have to save them from our Livestock Guardian Dogs.

Why?? Surely they donā€™t provide much sustenance. Is there a use for saw palmetto berries?

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Big Harvesters come up to pay decent cash from Florida. They send them up to huge warehouses out in the midwest to supply the health food market. One of our poorer semi-itinerate neighbors makes quite an income collecting medical/health food desired plants. Much of the crops go to China as well. But at least our neighbor always gets permission to collect.

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Gulf Stream has a major influence on southern UK and Ireland weather.

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Apperrently youā€™ve never watched Killing It. It tells the tale of how Craig Robinson became a multi millionaire from farming saw palmetto.

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Sadly paying folks to collect plants from the wilds/private lands is a lot cheaper then farming. But at a huge cost if you are merely a forager for yourself or family use. Which does not impact the ecosystem much.

The already banned public road foraging and off state/federal lands. Now they are trying to pass big first time cash penalties to boot. So living off the land requires owning it.

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The berries help older men and prostate gland problemsā€¦so there is certainly a demand for the berriesā€¦foragers go after them just like gensing.

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If they applied that to non-citizens, itā€™d sure be helpfulā€¦instead of jailing our poor that drop out of society.

Yes in Georgiaā€¦or you mean in Scotland?

Georgia. Do not get me started. I have a lot of LEO relatives and back the Blue. However the current probation system really has morphed into a modern form of indentured servitude. Seems like anytime a skilled person is about to get off probation; they bust them to add many more years of free labor for the County.

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:no_mouth: Sorry.

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I dont know Spokane at all, but to see a 14 degree spread in minimum tempbetween two different sites in the same city is remarkable. Ive seen elevation differences of 5-6 degrees here during inversions. I suppose the delta might get higher under the right conditions. Still, if I were to take a blind guess Id say Felts Field is in quite a favorable location- sheltered, elevated, heat island- and the airport is in a frost pocket.

Also noteworthy from the table (thanks @swincher) is how the USDA zone doesnā€™t tell you much about the distribution. Our record low here is/was -35 F. (I forget the year, Id have to dig it out.) Even in the ~20 hears Ive been here, which have obviously been substantially warmer, we see -20 every 5 yrs and -15 every other year or so. So weā€™re zone 5b but with a 15 degree difference between mean and record low. You guys in Spokane seem to have nearly double that spread based on @swincher ā€™s chart.

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Thatā€™s an interesting metric to think about, the difference between the 30-year average annual minimum and the 30-year (or all-time) absolute minimum.

Here in Seattle our current average annual minimum (30-year) is about 22Ā°F, the 30-year absolute minimum is 14Ā°F (2008/2010 tied). So a difference of only 8Ā°F!

The average of all annual minimums since 1948 is 18.4Ā°F, with an all-time record low of 0Ā°F (1950). So a bit more of a spread, but still nothing like in Spokane.

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Spokane is weird.

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