My interest is only on common
vegetable garden crops, not grain or fodder. For example, the
Matanuska valley in Alaska is cabbage territory.

What information, exactly, are you asking? Are you asking which vegetables are
succesfully grown commercially in different places now? Are you looking for
potential diversification to crops not yet grown in a certain area? There are
many sources for the data you mentioned: for climate, my old Time Life
Encyclopedia of Gardening shows maps of USDA zones, based on average minimum
winter temperature; zones of date of first and last killing frost; and general
vegetation types (e.g., eastern hardwood, Pacific coastal forest).
Publications by Sunset magazine show more narrowly-defined zones for western
North America, based on a variety of factors. fertility, there are surely
maps of different soil types, on both local and regional scales -- might want
to try USDA for starters. For rainfall, the vegetation zone maps give a
general sense of this (e.g., prairie has less rainfall than broadleaf forest,
but more than steppe).

When you say "vegetable carden crops," do you mean a small kitchen garden, a
market garden/truck farm, or a large-scale commercial operation specializing in
one or a few vegetables? Melons, for example, are grown large scale in Arizona
and western Texas (long hot season, lots of sun, irrigation), but may be found
in small gardens just about everywhere.

Jie-san Laushi

Huodau lau, xuedau lau, hai you sanfen xue bulai
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