Two Dogs and a Garden

What’s Your Zone and Where’s Your Sun?

Two important questions to ask yourself when starting any new planting bed are:  1. What’s your zone? 2. Where’s your sun? No, I’m not referring to bad pick up lines relating to the Zodiac. Though these would be great conversation starters at any garden group function you might be attending out of state.

It is essential to know what zone you live in, in order to know when to plant what, and what grows best in your area. Finding your zone is easy to Google up. There are maps that are lined out where each zone is across the United States. Here in the Charlotte, NC area, we are  Zone 7. This info will also help you determine what will overwinter outside. Some plants that will grow throughout the year in Florida will die here, as it gets too cold and the plants will freeze.  I don’t know when it came about, but noticed over the past few years, they have split up zones even more, and I am now specifically located in 7 B. With that info in hand, you can find out when to plant what.  In zone 7, you have to plant cool weather crops early. For instance, cilantro, lettuce, broccoli and peas better be planted by now. Cilantro bolts quickly (goes to seed) in hot weather, and lettuce will become too bitter to eat once our hot as Hades weather hits.  Dare not leave that beauty of a Mandevilla to continue wrapping its’ flowered vines around your deck railing when freezing temps start or you will not see it next year. At least not alive, anyway.

Secondly, before deciding on where to start a garden, you have to know where your sun is, and for how long. Some plants need full sun to grow best, some need shade, and there’s a huge array in between. Dappled sun, part sun, part shade, morning sun and afternoon shade. Look at your yard throughout the day and graph it out on paper. Keep in mind the sun is higher in the sky in the summer and lower in the winter. Now is a good time to take a look throughout the day and mark where there is sun, since the trees are now green once again. If you look in the winter, of course you will have much more sun documented with all the deciduous trees having lost their leaves. But once they have returned to filling out their bare branches with leaves, you will see how quickly sun can disappear. Tomatoes and peppers need a good 8 hours of sun for best production. Sure, you will get some tomatoes and peppers for your pasta sauce on less than 6 hours, but not what you will get with 8 or more hours. And don’t dare plant your beauty of an ostrich fern in sun, or else you will cook it and it won’t taste like chicken.

So, once you find out what zone you are in, and how much sun you have where, you can decide where to plant that vegetable garden, that woodland shade garden, and everything in between.

And as an Aquarian, I must add a #3. The water factor. You can’t plant tomatoes in a bog, no matter how sunny it may be. And don’t bother planting a papyrus in a bone dry desert area, or you will be highly disappointed. Once you have picked your new garden spot, grab a shovel. What’s that? Hard red clay? I hear you. That’s why all the tips of our shovels are broken off. That and rock and shale and…So I say to that, “AMEN-D.”