Just another way the world has changed.
I was close to high school graduation the first time I ate a green bean from a can. Until then, the green beans we ate came in Mason jars, grown, strung, and canned at my grandparent’s weekend-away property in Blue, WV. They lived full-time in Parkersburg, but what most today would refer to as a “deer camp,” was, for my family, basically a “garden camp.”
“The Cabins,” as we called the place, sat a field away from the two-lane road, right where Blue Creek met Middle Island Creek. The driveway divided the field in two, with small pines along the way on each side of the path. We mowed the left-hand field like a lawn, and every spring, Grandpa tilled the right-hand field into a significantly sized garden plot.
And for the rest of the summer, Granpda ran that rototiller every single weekend.
Women, children, and grandchildren sowed the seed: half-runners and Blue Lake beans, lettuces for wilting, yellow sweet corn. We also weeded and hoed, de-bugged, fertilized, and harvested. Potatoes were planted St. Patrick’s Day Weekend, beans and corn according to the Farmer’s Almanac. Grandpa ran the tiller, Daddy mowed the field with a riding mower, women went from garden to kitchen to porch swings on a regular rotation.
As kids, we avoided those areas as much as possible for fear of getting sent to garden duty or stuck stringing beans. We fished, explored, swam, napped, played board games in the shade. (Once, from her porch swing, Grandma watched horse riders meander down the main road afar. She grabbed a shovel and a paper grocery bag, and recruited me to help her scoop up the manure left behind for her tomatoes. A pre-teen at the time, I was horrified.)
There was no fence around Grandpa’s garden for many years. All these years later, I wonder at that fact. How was that even possible? The first garden fence I remember was short and reserved for Grandpa’s newly planted strawberry patch. I don’t ever remember deer gathering around his peach, apple, and plum trees, or a single Canada goose on or around the creeks.
I think of Grandpa’s garden often in the spring as I make my own plans for the growing season. Last year, our garden became a priority project in our lives again, after about a decade of minimal attention. The whole season was a flop, with low germination numbers, low harvest numbers, and just a disappointment all around. I’m still perplexed about last year’s season, and how to adjust to the disturbing new realities of gardening.
On November 15, 2023 The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a new version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM), updating this valuable tool for gardeners and researchers for the first time since 2012. USDA’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location.
Plant hardiness zone designations represent what’s known as the “average annual extreme minimum temperature” at a given location during a particular time period (30 years, in this instance). Put another way, the designations do not reflect the coldest it has ever been or ever will be at a specific location, but simply the average lowest winter temperature for the location over a specified time.
The new map—jointly developed by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University’s (OSU) PRISM Climate Group—is more accurate and contains greater detail than prior versions. The 2023 map is based on 30-year averages of the lowest annual winter temperatures at specific locations, and incorporates data from 13,412 weather stations compared to the 7,983 that were used for the 2012 map.
When compared to the 2012 map, the 2023 version reveals that about half of the country shifted to the next warmer half zone, and the other half of the country remained in the same half zone.
Shall we compare today’s garden to Grandpa’s? A study of the long-term change in the coldest temperatures of the year—which determine which plants are likely to thrive—in 247 U.S. locations. Scientists averaged each location’s annual minimum temperatures over a rolling 30-year period, from 1951-1980 to the present (1993-2022), and found:
- Compared to a 1951-1980 baseline, the average annual minimum temperatures during the most recent 30-year period (1993-2022) were 3.1°F warmer.
- 50% of locations experienced an increase in their plant hardiness zone (e.g., from Zone 5 to Zone 6) at some point over the period of analysis.
Of course, anyone in tune with the environment around them has already noticed these shifts. Anyone working in tandem with the land, moon, sun, and weather already knew something was up. As a location’s planting zone increases (e.g., from Zone 5 to 6), certain plants and insects expand into areas where they previously wouldn’t have survived. While this can have benefits, it also expands the range of invasive plant and insect species. So, get used to that Kudzu, those Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs, expanding blackberry brambles, and the overwhelming, stark white of the spring-blooming Bradford Pear.
(On a recent trip to Mother’s and the Mid-Ohio Valley, along Route 14 into Mineral Wells, I drove up over the rise out of “town” to approach the intersection with I-77 and was stunned by the the overwhelming whiteness of the valley and facing ridge. And guess what? Those suckers are like Autumn Olive Trees. Cut them off without treating them, and they grow back twice as thick.)
Of course, I’ve been saying our seasons are off for years, and bought ootheca (praying mantis egg sacs) online ten years ago to keep the stink bugs down to a single summer lifecycle instead of the potential six to eight generation summer. A decade ago, ootheca were $10 online. Now, they’re $40 each. So it’s not the long, slow shifting that troubles me. It’s the way last year’s growing season suffered from unforseen mishaps that might — or might not (hopefully not?) — happen again.
Let me elaborate:
Central West Virginia is approximately 525 miles from the Canadian border, and about 225 miles from East Palestine, Ohio. In February 2023, a train carrying chemicals wrecked in East Palestine, and in March 2023, Canadaian woodlands caught fire. I never imagined how both would affect our garden.
The train wreck, among other things, released phosgene into the atmosphere. Phosgene was used extensively during World War I as a choking agent. It is now used to make pesticides, among other things and smells like freshly cut hay. In the air, phosgene degrades in much the same way as in water – via hydrolysis to form carbon dioxide and hydrochloric acid. But the half-life for phosgene in the air is estimated at 44 years.
The wreck also released hydrochroic gas which, when combined with water, produces hydrochloric acid, the main component of gastric acid, an acid produced naturally in the human stomach to help digest food. Into the air it went, all those miles away…
Beginning in March 2023, and with increased intensity in June, Canada was affected by a record-setting series of wildfires. A record 45.7m acres went up in flames (about twice the size of Portugal), shattering the previous annual record nearly three times over. More than 1.7 billion tons of planet-heating gases were released by the enormous fires – about three times the total emissions that Canada produces each year.
Over 6,500 fires sprang up, unusually, across the whole country. At least 100 of those were fierce enough to create their own weather via pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or “fire storm clouds”, which can stretch 200 miles (320km) wide and carry ash and other debris upward. The wildfire smoke event began on June 6 as a low-pressure weather system stalled over the Gulf of Maine, rotating in a counterclockwise direction. A haze spread across the entire east coast, even over Florida.
I remember standing in the garden last summer, facing west, casually looking at the world and the sun. It took a few seconds, but I recall thinking, “Wait. I’m looking at the sun. I should be able to look at the sun.” But there I was, no sunglasses, no shading hand, looking through a soupy sky to observe the bright orb above. I knew, in that moment, no effort on my part could improve the garden’s plight.
Fires in Canada still burn. Overwintering fires, also called “Zombie fires,” also called overwintering fires, smolder. In February 2024, 149 active wildfires were burning across Canada.
Grandpa barely needed fencing, and his pest-nemesis was the native potato bug. These days, pesticide still floats in the air, and I hope hope the gas that easily mixes with water to rain down stomach acid is gone by now. But Canada smolders still, and spot fires in Appalachia are already being reported.
I’m not inspired to repair garden fence this year. I think I’ll finish assembling the greenhouse instead. I can control the light and “weather” there.
