Microclimate Trouble Spots

Spend enough time gardening in one place and you can get to know it well. 

- Susan M. Brackney

For instance, , you may know just where you have pockets of poor-draining, clay-heavy soils or a spot which routinely fills with garlic mustard or other invasive weeds. And, if you know what you're up against, you can usually mitigate the problem. Getting to know all you can about the various microclimates around your property can be similarly valuable.

"We have a lot of microclimates here where I live in Skagit County, Washington," says Don McMoran, director of Washington State University's Skagit County Extension. "You could travel a mile and the weather could be completely different.

"A lot of farmers that I work with have these [microclimates] down fairly well. So, they may get started on the field and they'll get rained out, but then they'll quickly travel across the county and be able to continue to farm in another location. Farmers farming the same piece of land for 20 years get to know where weather events are occurring within their own farms and their own counties."

Mapping Microclimates

While microclimates may span just a few square feet, they also can encompass much larger areas. What microclimates of all sizes have in common is that their conditions vary substantially from the regional climate as a whole.

To get a good sense of their respective regional climates, many growers have come to rely on the Plant Hardiness Zone maps for the U.S. and Canada. Thanks to greater access to weather reporting data and reliance on Geographic Information System technology, the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is more detailed than ever. Specifically developed for Internet use, the 2023-updated online map may even afford some microclimate clues. (See https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov to access.)