26-04-2003, 01:21 PM
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map of North America by crop
In article ,
userve (Jie-san Laushi) writes:
| My interest is only on common
| vegetable garden crops, not grain or fodder. For example, the
| Matanuska valley in Alaska is cabbage territory.
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| 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).
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| 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.
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| Jie-san Laushi
Thank you for the response. I see that the question was poorly asked.
Perhaps a better way to ask is: if I move to Kellogg Idaho, what garden
vegetables will I be able to grow successfully given that particular soil,
climate, rainfall, etc. What about Flagstaff, or Fargo, or Duluth? I
was hoping for a single map showing the range of crops as it varies from
place to place.
-Keith
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