Pictures can be Deceiving

[digitS']

What is wrong with this picture?

It was taken just a short distance from where I once lived. The deception? The growing season was only about 90 days!

I lived just off the Bunco Road. I should have known !

Some of the old timers told me that frost could actually occur in any month. There was never a frost in July while I lived and gardened there but I really had to move to a lower elevation to satisfy life's imperatives.

You should know that I once had frost damage at the end of August in another garden that should officially have had a growing season of 150 days. Really, the growing season for the warm weather crops was over after that light frost. The weather never warmed enough before frost killed them a week or so later.

And, this area has a zone 5 winter! It goes to show you that the severity of winter cold does not necessarily translate to the length of the frost-free season. Zone designations can be deceiving .

Steve

 

[journey11]

Indeed! I've been finding it helpful to keep a personal "almanac", jotting those things down on the calendar and keeping records. Amazing how much variance you can see from year to year in details that would have been a bit fuzzy if left only to my memory. The weather is only slightly predictable!

ETA: I am on a higher elevation than most of my family living very nearby. They'll be lamenting their first frost, while it may still be a couple weeks more before I get any.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I remember ice on the water bucket in August when camping in southern Wyoming at 7000 feet. Below freezing at 7:00 a.m. and short sleeve weather 3 hours later.

 

[vfem]

I deceive myself all the time... really... just for the heck of it, I'll try to grow tomatoes in November!

It is so true though, that "ZONES ARE A SUGGESTION".

 

[hoodat]

That's why I prefer the Sunset zones to the USDA zones. The USDA only tells you one thing, how cold it gets in the Winter. Sunset zones take a lot of other important factors into consideration and are a more reliable estimate on what can be grow where. Originally it was set up only for California but California is a big state and includes zones all the way from sub tropical to near sub arctic.

 

[lesa]

That was a short growing season indeed- but it sure was gorgeous!

 

[digitS']

Before I moved out to the Bunco . . . . I looked at some land that was even more remote and just lovely. It was only a mile from the St. Maries River, a beautiful stream in northern Idaho.

The land was level and below 3,200 feet and there were only low hills nearby. I decided to camp on the property over the July 4th weekend. The coffee in the coffee pot froze overnight sitting on a rock beside the campfire ashes!!


Needless to say, I didn't move there !

Steve

 

[lesa]

Man, I complain because you need a jacket on the 4th of July!!

 

[digitS']

I remember ice on the water bucket in August when camping in southern Wyoming at 7000 feet. Below freezing at 7:00 a.m. and short sleeve weather 3 hours later.

The Bunco area is only between 2,500 and 2,600 feet - that part of it which in down in the valley, anyway. The short season is partly because we are so far north.

It is farther north here than any part of northern Maine, altho' the climate in Maine must be colder. Another issue was that clouds would build up in the valley and dissipate very late in the day during the Spring. Long, long hours of daylight but overcast skies . . . After the short-days of winter - I began to go nutz after a few years!!

Alaska would probably be like Siberia to me . . . Okay, it would probably be Siberia to anyone.

Some Wyoming communities have NO frost-free season. Perhaps, you would have something like a 10% chance of frost in any week out of the year! Of course, at 7,000 feet, the air is so thin that birds have to walk wherever they are going . . .

Steve

 

[hoodat]

Speaking of double rainbows have you seen the one on youtube? Bear Vasquez looks like a guy I'd like to know. He gets more out of a rainbow than most people get out of winning the lottery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BRZkupyURw