Have you heard? Recently, the USDA updated its Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which shows the growing zone you’re living in. The new map has changed some growing zones by half, and some gardeners feel validated because they know that the climate and growing zones are changing.
While climate change news isn’t always encouraging, you can grab your garden trowel and make a difference on your property to slow it down.
“How?” you ask.
Continue reading this blog post to learn how you, as a gardener, can make a difference when you embrace organic garden practices in your corner of the world:
- What’s the big deal about the new USDA map
- Don’t give into eco-anxiety
- Learn the environmental impact of the organic garden
- Community and social impact of organic gardening
- Tips for starting your organic garden.
What’s the Big Deal About the New USDA Map?
The USDA’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM) shows gardeners when the first and last frost date of the year will be, and it guides them with what perennials, trees, and shrubs will survive in their local climate.
The map also shows gardeners what plants can handle the coldest night temperatures in their local area. The 2023 map showed a 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit jump from the 2012 map across the continental U.S.
Read more: Elevate Your DIY Game with Brinly’s Ground Engaging Attachments
According to an NPR.org article, ‘It Feels Like I’m Not Crazy.’ Gardeners Aren’t Surprised as USDA Updates Key Map many gardeners have realized a shift to warmer temperatures over the past 11 years.
One of the people who helped develop the 2023 PHZM shares that half the country has shifted into a new growing zone while the other half hasn’t.
Some gardeners are finding they can plant different annuals, perennials, fruits, and vegetables they couldn’t grow over a decade ago because it was too cold.
Yet, the USDA and PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University, who worked with the USDA in 2023, don’t necessarily attribute these warmer temperatures to climate change. Instead, they say that previous PHZM developers used the coldest night of the year, every year, for more than 30 years, making it a “highly variable figure.”
Don’t Give Into Eco-Anxiety
All this news about climate change can feel overwhelming. And some folks suffer from “eco-anxiety,” but if you’re a Gen Z or Millennial gardener, don’t lose heart. You can make a difference in your garden right now.
While no single person can do everything to reduce emissions into the atmosphere or stop climate change, you can make an environmental impact through organic gardening.
The 2024 Garden Trends Report by Garden Media says there is a new way to look at climate change other than doom and despair.
EcoTok Collective, the “Environmentalists of TikTok,” wants to give you, Zoomers and Millennials, hope and control to take back the climate in your area.
The answer is simple—create organic gardens in your yard and community. If you’ve noticed that your region is warmer, you may want to experiment with organic plants that couldn’t be grown in your neck of the woods a decade ago.
Organic gardening rehabilitates the soil’s ecosystem, provides food for you and your family, and adds more trees to sequester carbon from the air.
The Environmental Impact of the Organic Garden
Organic gardening allows you to include more plants that benefit pollinators, including the Monarch butterfly and bees.
You can also grow herbs, native plants, vegetables, and fruits, which produce local food for you and your family while increasing carbon in the soil. Carbon adds nutrients through mineralization and improves the soil’s structure.
You can also incorporate rotating vegetable crops and other annuals to maintain soil microbial health and prevent plant diseases. Plus, an organic garden reduces carbon emissions because no food packaging, refrigeration, or transportation are involved.
Reducing your lawn to put in more trees and shrubs or another garden bed also reduces your impact on climate change. Trees help reduce carbon in the air by storing it.
Trees also serve as windbreaks when planted near buildings. Tree shade cools your home in the summer and keeps it warmer in the winter if planted on your house’s northern or western side.
For more ways your organic garden can impact the environment, consider these points:
- When you grow flowering plants, such as borage, lavender, mint, black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, cardinal flowers, and roses, you help the declining bee population. When you plant milkweed, you provide food for Monarch butterflies.
- Don’t use neonicotinoids or other chemicals that have been shown to kill pollinators. Instead, practice Integrated Pest Management (IPM).
- If you have a large garden or a farm, consider growing cover crops over the winter to keep moisture in the soil, suppress weeds, stop erosion, have carbon-containing organic matter, and provide soil nutrients for future crops.
- Always grow various plants to improve the soil’s ecosystem, store more carbon, stop runoff, and improve plant health.
- A diversity of growing plants, which include herbs, ground covers, native plants, perennial plants, ornamentals, and vegetables, helps pollinators. Use drought-tolerant and native plants to conserve water.
If you have an urban garden, you can help the environment by growing vertical plantings, hanging baskets, and container gardening with pollinator-friendly plants.
Learn more: Enhance Your Space: DIY Gardening Projects with Raised Beds & Vertical Gardens
Community and Social Impact of Organic Gardening
Get involved in your local community and help others learn the power and joy of an organic garden.
Create sustainability in your community with an organic garden. Here’s how to set up a community organic garden
- Grab a soil test to check the dirt’s pH levels and what nutrients are missing.
- Consider using raised beds if starting a community garden in an urban setting because city soils may have heavy metals or other contaminants.
- Teach folks how to tend a garden, from healthy soil to seeds and plugs, mulching, and watering. If you’re part of the PTA or PTO at your local elementary school, you can include math, science, social studies, and people skills with your community garden.
- Come up with recipes during harvest, so community gardeners know how to prepare their produce at home.
Tips for Starting Your Organic Garden
You can start an organic garden at home very quickly. If you have a lot of acreage, you can grow a large garden and even a small orchard. You’ll need ground-engaging garden equipment to create your garden plot.
Here are other tips for growing an organic garden:
- Once you have an area for your organic garden, use ground-engaging garden attachments to dig up that plot. In an urban setting, you can buy a raised bed kit and grow many plants in containers.
- Use nutrient-dense organic soil. Organic soil is one of the most essential ingredients for growing a successful organic garden. The soil should be aerated so seeds, soil, oxygen, fertilizer, and water can go deep into the soil.
- Start a compost pile to make your organic soil. Use a mix of dry and green by-products that will turn into an earthy soil filled with nutrients.
- Check out the PHZM to see when the last frost will be in your region and when it’s safe to plant your organic garden.
- Sow organic seeds or plant plugs in your organic garden according to your growing zone. See the PHZM and remember that your zone will be an “a” or “b.”
- Water your organic garden wisely. Don’t overwater; your plants could die from root rot or another disease. Install drip irrigation to deliver water directly to your garden plants.
- Alternatively, you can collect rain in rain barrels to use in your garden or soaker hoses that emit water droplets right at ground level.
- If you use a regular garden hose, try not to get water on the plant stems or leaves because some plants will develop powdery mildew.
- Use vegetable garden mulch, grass clippings, hay, or straw as mulch over the top of your organic garden. These mulches will regulate soil temperature, reduce weeds, and retain moisture.
- Don’t use bark mulch because it won’t allow seeds to germinate or get needed irrigation because it’s denser than the garden mulches mentioned above.
Summing Up
The USDA changed its PHZM for 2024 and shows which regions have gotten warmer in the past 11 years. Use the PHZM to inform you when planting your organic garden in the spring.
Follow the tips for starting an organic garden and you should have successful crops. Also, use Brinly’s Ground Engaging Equipment to create your garden plot this spring.
How Brinly’s Ground Engaging Equipment Helps You with Your Organic Garden
Our Ground Engaging Equipment will help you create your next organic garden plot. Our garden attachments help get the job done efficiently and expertly.
You can buy your next Brinly lawn care and garden products online. If you have any questions about your Brinly lawn and garden product, contact our customer service today by dialing 877-728-8224 or filling out our contact form.
Sources:
Agriculture.VIC.gov.au, Soil and Carbon for Reduced Emissions.
ARS.USDA.gov, USDA Unveils Updated Plant Hardiness Zone.
Extension.WSU.edu, Climate-Friendly Gardening—Tip Sheet #14.
GardenMediaGroup.com, 2024 Garden Trends Report: Eco-Optimism.
JainUSA.com, Understanding the New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Changes.
NPR.org, ‘It Feels Like I’m Not Crazy.’ Gardeners Aren’t Surprised as USDA Updates Key Map.
