http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/
This may not be news to the average person, but to gardeners this is confirmation to what we have been observing in our own back yards.
I grew up in a solid zone 3 climate in northern Oconto County. When I had my first garden in central Wisconsin, it was also in a zone 3 climate. Plant after Memorial Day and get your garden canning done by Labor Day. You might get a couple weeks past, but you had better watch the weather so you wouldn't be surprised by frost. I had a sister who married August 28th in 1974. She and her new husband spent their first night alone at my oldest sister's home. They got a phone call that night to go out and cover the garden since frost was coming. They complied with the request even though it was their wedding night as they knew that the garden produce was important to our sister's family. If you look at the map above you will see that these areas are now a solid zone 4 climate.
I have watched zone 5a move from a thin sliver alone the Lake Michigan shoreline creep further inland. Whole counties and then some are now in zone 5b, which is even warmer than 5a. I was harvesting crops into November the last two years. I am not too surprised by this shift.
I am not going to get into the Global Warming/Climate Change debate here. There is more politics than science that has circled around these buzz words and people get emotional about it. I will talk about Aldo Leopold who penned A Sand County Almanac and his daughter Nina. Leopold was required reading in the natural resources majors especially in Wisconsin. His journals and written observations on his farm in the central sands area documented land changes and migratory patterns since the 1930's. Nina took up his work in 1976 and continued to document bloom times and the comings and goings of birds and wildlife patterns. I remember listing to a radio interview of her several years ago talking about the comparisons between her father's journals and her own. Migration of many birds and bloom time of plants changed by weeks on this same property in less than half a century. These are things which are governed by temperature and not by political beliefs. It has gotten warmer and the world is changing. A cold snap is not something that disproves this just as a heat wave doesn't support it. We are talking long term averages which affect plant growth and animal behaviors.
If you garden, you are not surprised. I plant things earlier than I did. Sometimes it is a gamble but it has paid off more times than I have been caught with my frost covers off. I enjoy the longer season without having to move further south. But it is not all good and we just don't know yet what it will mean for the future. Meanwhile, we will look at the zone hardiness on plant tags and wonder...if I plant this zone 6 plant in my yard, will it come back next year? You can always try.
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