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FeedStrange days are here
Unless there’s a late-breaking and lengthy blast of frigid activity, 2012 may be known as the year of the winter that wasn’t. Such snow events as we’ve had have added an inch or so at best, only to melt within the next twenty-four hours. Snowdrops and Lenten roses have been blooming at least six weeks early in my front yard, and I’ve heard about crocuses appearing way ahead of schedule in other local gardens.
The long-awaited revision of the USDA zone map (zone designations help indicate whether plants are winter-hardy where you live) , started in 2004 but only just released, shows that Buffalo and environs have moved up from zone 5b to zone 6a. This in spite of the fact that the USDA team reached back thirty years (from 1975 to 2005) to collect their temperature data to determine the new zones. According to Cornell horticulture professor David Wolfe, who specializes in climate change, the new map is actually conservative, and reflects upward mobility of average temps that’s been going on for some years.
Most reading this will not live to see it—and maybe it won’t happen—but some scientists predict that by the end of this century the climate of New York State will be like Georgia’s is now. So those who are thinking of moving to North Carolina could sit tight and wait for North Carolina—at least its weather—to get here.
The other big horticultural news over the past week had to do with the unholy alliance of garden chemical giant Scotts Miracle-Gro with the National Wildlife Federation. This only lasted a few days, however; the NWF had to back away from Scotts’ financial help when SM-G plead guilty to selling pesticide-coated bird feed. (Not really ideal when your partner protects wildlife.)
This is not an alls-well-that-ends-well moment. SM-G is a partner of Monsanto; Monsanto makes the Roundup pesticide and SM-G sells it exclusively in the U.S. Though not the most toxic garden chemical on the market, Roundup does do damage to wildlife and is also part of the cycle of genetically-modified (modified to be resistant to Roundup) crops now marketed by Monsanto. A lot of farmers, consumers, and other members of the food-making and buying public don’t think this is the way its supposed to work. And now it turns out that a former Monsanto VP is a senior advisor to the Food and Drug Admininstration. So as soon as the SM-G/NWF protests ended, the Monsanto/FDA protests began.
It all reminds me of the saying from (I think) an old margarine commercial:
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
