Growing Season update
We’ve been collecting temperature data from our weather station for some years now.
We’ve analyzed this to determine the number of days our growing season is.
Some crops can survive -3 deg C “heavy frost” nights while most can survive -1 deg C “light frost” nights.
Actual Growing days
Year #days between light frost #days between heavy frost
2003 172 Apr30-Oct23 194 Apr24-Nov08
2004 156 May08-Oct11 201 Apr16-Nov03
2005 156 May17-Oct20 215 Mar13-Oct21
2006 no data
2007 147 May18-Oct12 153 May13-Oct13
2008 154 May05-Oct06 160 Apr30-Oct07
2009 129 May13-Sep19 179 Apr17-Oct12
2010 119 Jun13-Oct10 142 Jun11-Nov01
2011 167 Apr22-Oct06 167 Apr22-Oct06
2012
To date we had -3 “heavy frost” last night, April 19th, 2012.
A note that we are far from Lake Ontario, which is a huge moderating influence on temperature in the spring and fall. Hence our growing season is much shorter than say, Kingston Ontario. Typically in the summer, days are +5deg C and nights are -5deg C over those in Kingston.
This in part comes from very thin soil, a lot of exposed limestone, and the Canadian Shield just a short distance north of us.