Plant Hardiness Zones Demystified for the Newbie Gardener
If you’re a new gardener perhaps you’ve purchased your first home or are just trying gardening for the first time and wondering where to start? and what to grow in your first garden?, well a good place to start for all gardeners is finding out what plants it is possible to grow in your new garden, in other words what plants can live happily and return each season within your region as far as average seasonal temperatures in your locality will allow.
The easiest place for a new gardeners to discover this information is probably by reference to the weather network website locate your town or city and then click on the blue home and garden tab and choose lawn and garden forecast, you should see something like the image below, this is the report that it gives me as a St Catharines gardener myPlant Hardiness Zone number for here where I live in St Catharines in the Niagara region of Ontario.
6B hardiness zone for gardeners of St Catharines Ont
If for some reason your particular gardener info isn’t shown don’t worry (sometimes small towns are not listed) you can always refer to your Plant Hardiness Zone map for your gardening region, this is where the weather network got the info from anyway. Below you may view an image of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone map, this map covers all of the US and most of Southern Canada.
Gardeners info, image of more familiar USDA growing map
Definition: “There are 11 planting zones, or “USDA Plant Hardiness Zones,” in the United States and southern Canada. The USDA planting zones are regions defined by a 10 degree Fahrenheit difference in the average annual minimum temperature. To put the definition in simple terms, the higher the numbers, the warmer the temperatures for gardening in those planting zones
The Canadian Ministry of Agriculture not satisfied with the USDA’s methods of data collection for Canadian Gardeners decided to create their own,the US one only considers minimum average temperatures. In 1967, Agriculture Canada created a plant hardiness map for purely Canadian gardeners using Canadian plant survival data and a wider range of climatic variables, including minimum winter temperatures, length of the frost-free period, summer rainfall, maximum temperatures, snow cover, January rainfall and maximum wind speed. In the attempt at creating a much more accurate assessment for all Canadian gardeners This database was updated for the use of all Canadian Gardeners in 2000, and is once again due to be updated shortly yet again. Canadian gardeners where ever possible should choose the Canadian Hardiness map,as it contains far more accurate information for Canuck gardeners than does the the USDA map.
Most other countries also have a growing zone maps bearing similar data. If you refer to your map you will find on inspection that you may view a map of your specific region within the larger Country map
Hardiness Zone Map of Europe. Courtesy of iVillage
Japan Hardiness Zones courtesy of Aboc-sha & Co., Ltd.
For Canadian Gardeners
Eastern Ontario / Western Quebec
New Brunswick / Eastern Quebec
Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland
For informative purposes for all gardeners it is standard practice for seed warehouses and nurseries and garden centers and catalogs to label their products according to USDA planting zones, that is, with a single number that represents a “hardiness zone” supposedly a simple way to describe how well a plant will survive in your particular climate. The zone represents the average minimum winter temperature of the planting zones in which the gardener will be most successful at growing those particular plants. However only “some” Canadian labels reference the Canadian plant hardiness maps so Canadian gardeners pay particular attention to the labels.
But all gardeners both veteran and newbie gardeners alike ,should pay close attention to plant labels as they are obviously a great source of information, but particularly for newbie gardeners who may never have even owned a house plant before. Even if you are a male of our species and for whom I realize it seriously goes against the grain to read instruction sheets or seek directions, plant labels are one exception that all gentlemen gardeners newbie or not must learn to make.
Amongst the other info (which will be discussed in a later post) the labels will most likely display something like
USDA ZONE 5 to ZONE 9
well this is great if you’re an experienced gardener and know that this means the selected plant usually lives through winter temperatures that can fall as low as 20degF to – minus 20degF however if you don’t know what these numbers mean, as a newbie gardener, or as in my case gardeners with a poor memory’s your none the wiser. Here’s a table to help you out
New Gardener info USDA Table displaying Temperatures
There are a few ways that Mother Nature can be cheated a little into allowing gardeners to grow plants that do not normally grow within their climate range, but we will cover that in another post and let all you novice gardeners figure out what growing zone you may be gardening in.