Just to remind everyone as they are walking past the plants in the entryways of your favorite store – we are not yet out of the woods for the possibility of a good hard frost.  The average last frost date that I have found reviewing various websites can be as early as March 30th to as late as June 6th with the most common last frost date for this area being May 4th.  Just keep this in mind and try to resist the temptation as you walk past all of those beautiful plants. I am sure the retailers would love to sell you the same plant twice but most of us don’t want to have to go through the hassle of planting things twice let alone having to pay for them twice.

We figured that to start this blog we should hit some of the basics about the Spokane area. One of the great debates I have encountered is whether or not we are considered a zone 5 or 6? Did I lose some of you there? Since we intend this blog for both new and experienced gardeners – I’ll start from the beginning.

The U. S. Dept. of Agriculture has a map of the particular growing zones in the United States. Click here for the official site A zone is defined by the lowest average temperature that is reached in a particular area, in addition, each zone is divided into an “a” and “b” section. If you look at the map, the inland northwest is colored many shades of yellow and green denoting zones 5 and 6; which are listed with lowest average temps of -20 degrees F to -15 (5a) -15 to -10 (5b) -10 to -5 (6a) -5 to 0 (6b).

To confuse the issue, Sunset magazine and the Sunset Western Garden Manual (one of my very favorite resources) has their own climate zone map, and we are considered a zone 2. Click here for their version. So when reading the descriptions on glorious new plants for a zone 6, remember that they are referring to somewhere in the vicinity of SW Oregon.

However, the key word in these definitions is the average temp. With the recent moods of mother nature we can certainly fall into zone 6, but even though I have only lived in the area for 7 years, I know it can get a whole lot colder than that. So it is very possible that one can have their landscape based largely around zone 6 plants, but one can also expect to replace the majority of them every few years.

Now, at this point we can easily segway into many different topics such as microclimates, mulching, overwintering, etc that are all reasonable exceptions to the rule – but we will save each of those topics for another post and state our position on the debate – all postings here will regard Spokane as a USDA zone 5 - because I would much rather play it safe and buy fun new varieties each year than spending my gardening budget on replacing something that could have been considered borderline hardy to begin with.

Happy gardening!

Questions, Comments, Continued debate? We welcome your input!