OK, before we get too deep into our cold climate growing practices, let’s first cover some foundational knowledge. You regulars are probably sick of hearing this stuff, but it’s truly the most important stuff we know about plants and cold climates.
The gist is that plants have differing degrees of cold temperature tolerance. We use terms to describe these tolerances like cold hardy, frost tolerant, frost sensitive and warm loving. What you might not know is that every plant fits into one of those four categories and this is incredibly usable information when growing in cold climates.
Basically, we’re describing something like “how cold can that plant be” and still like it. But, you can infer a ton of information from these fundamentals. Things like what plants you should harden off and when or what plants can go outside earlier than others. When we get to gardening, this information helps inform our entire planting and harvesting strategies.
There’s just way too much to cover under this topic, so we have a super handy article that attempts to demystify this topic. It’s a reference for the temperature tolerance of various plants and after reading it (or maybe referring again to it), these things will no longer be mysterious and vague terms. Linky in the comments.
We use this knowledge about plant temperature tolerance practically every single day we are gardening. We “knew” this stuff as amateur gardners, but it wasn’t until we started integrating it into every decision we make where we actually realized how foundational and important this information truly is.
Oh, and apologies for the late night post! We’re all ready up to 17 hours of daylight now and are just starting to feel intoxicated by the beginnings of the midnight sun! We’ll get acclimated here again soon, our sanity depends on it!
Demystifying Cold Hardy, Frost Tolerant, Frost Sensitive and Warm Loving Garden Plants
