You certainly plan ahead. I wouldn’t worry about it. Fruit trees that grow in zone 6 will also be ok in zone 7.
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This thread has been flagged multiple times. Please check your posts and ensure they are appropriate.
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I tried to find some fairly complete southern CA NOAA weather station datasets to run the USDA zone calculation for, and sadly many of them are spotty, with entire years missing here and there, or months at a time. One exception was Long Beach Airport, which has not missed so much as a single day since they started recording daily minimum temperature in 1949. Using that, here is the “average annual low” calculation from 1978 (30 years after 1949) to present:
Based on that, the USDA zone moved from 10a to 10b sometime in the early 2000s.
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The OP has asked repeatedly for people to respect her wish to only discuss fruit tree planning based on a possible zone change in 15 years.
Let’s not stray from that and causing the thread to be locked. Thank you.
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Leah,
I am in MA, too. Almost all my fruit trees in ground are rated zone 5 or higher. I am in zone 6a now (when I started many moons ago, it was zone 5a).
One fruit I want to plant in ground but can’t is non-astringent persimmons. If I would be be able to plant those NA persimmons in my backyard 15 years from now, I’d be happy.
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Average low is important to chill hours, but wine growers are more concerned with overall averages. Brix in CA wines has been on the rise with average temps and some say it has been detrimental to the quality of the crop. Excessive heat inland may be why midsummer peaches often go from being luscious to grainy crap with fruit getting literally cooked on the trees. Wine cultivation has pushed stonefruit production further inland in the last few decades, I believe.
I suppose that what is bad for CA wine grape growers is good for those in Washington and Oregon, but I’m no expert on wine.
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I hope this still vibes with the intent of your OP, but I’m looking at other factors more than my USDA zone.
I’m in the Great Lakes region, and we haven’t had a polar vortex sit on us for a few years, but I lost several Z5 holly bushes in the last one. I might risk it with a rosemary that I can cover or replace, but a dead fruit tree would break my heart.
However, our growing season has increased by roughly 2 weeks in 40 years. I might get a fig harvest most years, or I can try out new types of sweet potato, or melons! We’re also getting more precipitation overall, and more volume per event. So most of my planning has been towards containing and slowing the water so that it can be used, instead of overloading the storm sewers.
I am really tempted to try northern pecans, though. They say zone 5, maybe better, and they wouldn’t mind occasional wet feet.
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I wonder if N. pecans are ever very productive. I tried a couple in NY and crops were tiny and nuts small. The owner of the land sold it after the trees had been growing for maybe 22 years and the buyer never hired me to manage the extensive orchard I had installed there.
The filbert trees did fantastic.
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Absolutely, I’ve planted many more figs and Asian persimmons in the last 6 years. It used to be more challenging to grow them here, but winters have been less harsh. That doesn’t mean any will do here. I still select hardier selections that don’t ripen too late to maximize success.
There weren’t too many folks growing either around here 12 years when I planted my first ones. Many noticeable specimens have popped up in the mean time to the point where they’ve started becoming a common sight around my neighborhood with me playing no part in directly convincing anyone to plant them.
That’s not to say them won’t be heavily damaged by a colder than usual winter, but those have become less frequent.
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For grapes, dry farming is better, they develop complex flavor when the grape roots have to dig deeper. It has not hurt wine ratings at all. In fact I don’t buy wines in the wet year.
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That chart isn’t average low (which would matter more for chill hours), it’s the USDA zone calculation formula (the single lowest temperature each year for 30 years, with those 30 numbers averaged). Basically, that is the chart you want to get for any location so you can try to extrapolate what your zone may be in 15 years (the original topic here).
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That’s what I meant. Not sure why I botched my wording. I meant the lowest temp of the winter. I was parroting the wording of the chart.
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let’s see a chart of first and last frost and yearly precip though. because that’s the “weirding” part.
I think zone change is less relevant in general. climate change, global warming, whatever you call it and whatever you think is causing the disruptions, if you plant things outside you know there’s disruption.
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I’m wondering if my grapes won’t improve as the summers get drier here. same for figs.
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also sorry I’m posting a bunch in a row. I didn’t figure out how to condense quotes yet
I’m always planting my zone, 6, and up into 6b. for outdoor. I’ve been planting more drought hardy perennials and trees; my only water loving trees now are pawpaw because I have a single damp spot in the lot. everything else needs to be able to handle the future which looks dry and hot.
I would plant my zone, and maybe one step up from A to B, but not down to 5 or 5b. plants for colder or more damp climate won’t do well here in 15 years, but those for my zone will be ok a bit warmer.
it’s tricky, and looking into the future so far ahead is nearly impossible anyway without a load of scientific information I can’t always parse
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As I said, I’m no expert on wine, but I am aware that ideal soil for wine grapes is lean and too much water and too rich and deep a soil is bad for the quality of the wine produced. My comment was based on remarks I heard by one wine specialist about the quality of CA wines being hurt by the excessive brix created by warmer temps. I probably should have delved a bit deeper before posting my comment because when I searched it, this appears to be controversial, with some wine critics suggesting the higher brix is creating deeper and richer flavor while others say it drives up tannins at the expense of best flavor.
If you are interested, here is an enjoyable article on the subject. Why Are Wines’ Alcohol Content Growing So High?
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Yeah, that’s what I was also trying to convey, hopefully as free of animus as possible.
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It is not the roots having to dig deeper but what the dry air does to the skin of the grapes. Long story short the grape skin produces a number of chemical compounds intended to protect the fruit from the hostile environment. This is compounded at altitude, where there is less atmosphere to protect the grapes from stronger UV light and the plant responds accordingly.
If you want to see this in action get a bottle of California Malbec and a bottle of Chilean high altitude Malbec. If you ask me low altitude Malbec is only good for blends such as in the traditional Bordeaux red blend; by itself it is too thin and too soft lacking mouthfeel. The high altitude stuff is like a whole different grape altogether, full of body and nuance.
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This topic was moved for a short time to the Lounge, then after more admin discussion was moved back to General Fruit Growing. So some forum members may not have been able to see the topic for a short time.
Closing the thread has been discussed because of Climate change discussion and posts which members have flagged.
Again, please keep comments from drifting into climate change debates. I think the OP is interested in a discussion, that if the Washington Post is correct, and growing zones continue to get warmer, what trees are you going to plant, or other things you plan to do to adjust, if needed?
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Caveat, I’m in NC, and presumably you’re in CA, so I’m humid sub-tropical with strong continental effects, whereas you’re borderline-semi-arid mediterranean, and we’re on opposite sides of a continent, so our precipitation patterns and trends are quite different.
Yearly precipitation shows a strong uptrend.
Total Number of Frosts is also strongly down.
Last and First Frost
Finally, there’s been a solid increase in the number of growing days of about 13%, or 28 days, about 1/8th.
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