Re: California vs Florida climate zones

**"* C* <d*@chilitech.net>**

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kathryn Marsh" <kmarsh@iol.ie>

> Here in Ireland I
> sometimes have more than two weeks - though only seven miles -
> between my own north facing heavy clay frost pocket and Sonairte's
> south facing walled light loam.

I live on a south facing hillside in Pennsylvania. My growing season, frost 
to frost, is at least three weeks longer than my neighbor 50 yards down the 
hill and can be as much as six weeks longer. When the first fall frosts come 
and turn the grass white in the early morning, there is a line, as if drawn 
with a ruler, at the lower end of my property.

I consider the zone maps to be a valuable but very general guideline, a 
starting point to be honed by experience.

I use the Western Garden Book as my primary guide for house plants. I like 
the details of the climate zones for specific plants, and plants that 
Californians grow in their yards are house plants here. But I just hate the 
zones in Sunset's National Gardening Book (though other than that I think it 
is the best general gardening book around). For me they are no more accurate 
than the USDA zone map and ten times harder to understand. It puts me in 
zone 42, along with New York's Adirondack Mountains and southern 
Pennsylvania, which ranges from USDA zones 3 to 7. That is not helpful.

D 

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