First Frost

Monday we had our first frost. Although I still have peppers, beans and eggplant growing in the garden, I did not cover them because I've decided that it is time to let nature take it's course. Although I had to deal with this in my driveway, the plants in the garden remained unscathed. With the forecast for more mild weather the rest of the week, the vegetables will be able to continue to grow for a few more days, although I know that the end of the growing season is inevitably coming soon.

I can't help but acknowledge that the growing season has gotten longer. My recollection is that it was typically shortly after Labor Day when the first frost would hit. I tried to find actual data on historic fall frost dates for our region, but I could only find probability data based on a thirty (30) year average. For Concord, NH the Fall 90% probability frost date is September 26th (source http://www.howdogardener.com/439-2/freeze-and-frost-dates ). I will continue to research to find the actual data on spring and fall frost dates as it would be interesting to see the variability during my gardening life-time. There is no doubt that climate change is impacting gardeners. This was apparent in 2012 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) revised it's plant hardiness zone map. In addition to improved accuracy and an increase in the number of zones due to using more sophisticated algorithms for calculations, the shift in using more recent temperature data ,1976-2005, compared to 1974-1986 in the previous version, resulted in about a 5-degree Fahrenheit increase for most zones, although some zones did shift on the cooler scale. Copies of this map are available at http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/.