Know Your Zone! The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map Has Changed

It's true. The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map has changed, big time. It now has 26 zones.

Having trouble reading? Click here for a HUGE version of this image!

If you're in the Southeast, click on your state to view the different zones! If you're somewhere else, click the link above and you can select your state from a drop-down list or by entering your zip code.

• Alabama
• Mississippi
• Florida
• Georgia
• Louisiana

Since we're based in Alabama, here's Alabama's map for you! Most of the Mobile area is zone 9a. Dauphin Island is 9b. 

From the USDA website: 

"The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones.

For the first time, the map is available as an interactive GIS-based map, for which a broadband Internet connection is recommended, and as static images for those with slower Internet access. Users may also simply type in a ZIP Code and find the hardiness zone for that area.

No posters of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map have been printed. But state, regional, and national images of the map can be downloaded and printed in a variety of sizes and resolutions."

PTS Recommendation - Felder Rushing

A great radio program from MPB (Mississippi Public Broadcasting) is Felder Rushing's Gestalt Gardener. Apart from being informative, the show is entertaining and often humorous. Felder's "down-home" approach to gardening is really in sync with the growing home-grown movement as well as the "buy local" and craft food movements that are popular right now. Learn everything from how to properly compost to when you should plant your tomatoes!

The show is Friday (9am) and Saturday (10am) mornings, so don't miss it! Or, if you can't wait, you can listen to some recent episodes online (look below). Here's one titled "Sustainable in 2012".

Check out his show at the Gestalt Gardener link above, or check it out below!




Here's the bio from Felder's personal website:

"Felder Rushing is a 10th-generation American gardener whose pioneer ancestors (several lines of which were involved, on one side or the other, with the American revolution), settled across the Southeast, bringing many plants with them. Rushing's overstuffed, quirky cottage garden has been featured in many TV programs and magazines - including a cover of Southern Living and in the New York Times - and includes a huge variety of weather-hardy plants along with a collection of vernacular folk art. There is no turfgrass, just plants, yard art, and "people places."

Felder currently travels extensively for lectures or garden tours from both his cottage in Mississippi, and a farmhouse in England's rural Midlands near Wales.

The author or co-author of 17 gardening books (including several national award winners) and former Extension Service urban horticulture specialist (fully retired, at an early age) has written thousands of gardening columns in syndicated newspapers, and has had hundreds of articles and photographs published in regional and national garden magazines, including Garden Design, Horticulture, Garden Weekly (an English publication), Landscape Architecture, Better Homes and Gardens, Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, and the National Geographic.

Felder, who was celebrated in Southern Living magazine's 25th anniversary issue as one of "twenty five people most likely to change the South" has been featured three times in full-length articles in the New York Times. He has hosted a television program that was shown across the South, and appeared many times on other TV garden programs. Felder hosts a popular weekly call-in garden program on NPR affiliate stations called The Gestalt Gardener.

Rushing has served many years as a distinctly non-stuffy board member of the American Horticulture Society, national director of the Garden Writers Association, and member of the National Youth Gardening Committee. A rare male honorary member of Federated Garden Clubs of Mississippi and twice past president of his state's only chapter of the Mens' Garden Club (now Gardeners of America), Felder gives many dozens of lectures and workshops every year, coast to coast and overseas, at flower shows, horticultural and plant society meetings, and Master Gardener conferences.

Believing that too many would-be gardeners are intimidated by a crush of "how-to" experts ("We are daunted, not dumb," he says), Felder uses an offbeat, "down home" approach rife with humorous anecdotes and garden-irreverent metaphors, zany observations, and stunning photography and to help gardeners get past the "stinkin' rules" of horticulture."

The Very First PTS Landscape and Plant Terminology Crossword!

Print it out and do your best! See if you can get all 10!Planting the Language - Crossword I

Planting The Seed

Landscape Design, Gardening, and Plant Terminology

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Across 3. The stylistic period of the late 16th and 17th centuries, theatrical, dense, energetic and often quite confused and confusing, which loves pomp, illusion and drama. 6. The greener parts of landscape design, the part requiring watering, weeding and mowing. 7. A particular Japanese garden style, usually found in Zen Buddhist temples, often made from only raked white sand and boulders, creating a "mindscape" meant to aid meditation. 9. Straight path in a garden, often lined with trees. 10. Trees or bushes trimmed into ornamental shapes. In French gardens, they were usually trimmed into geometric shapes; in modern gardens, often cut into cute bunnies or puppy dogs.

Down 1. The architectural equivalent of a highway scenic overlook: a room or enclosure from which to view a landscape to advantage. 2. A modern word describing any process that does not use up more of something than it is possible to gain in return. 4. The use of gravel in place of grass to obviate constant watering. 5. A distant view or prospect, especially one seen through some opening. 8. The classical idealized landscape, usually with nymphs and swains. It is the pagan equivalent to Paradise.

 This crossword was created using www.armoredpenguin.com.