By Mary Jo Baur
The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has divided our country into 11 Hardiness Zones which give an indication of how cold the winters average in certain areas. They further divide some zones into parts A and B. If you check for Dracut, we are listed as being in Zone 6A; so when you are looking at labels or information in catalogs or books, you should make sure that tree, shrub or perennial will survive our winters. To be extra certain, you could choose plants that are hardy in Zone 5. Each zone is 10 degrees colder the farther north you go. And zones in the East are approximately 120 miles apart. The USDA map works well for the eastern part of our country because the land is relatively flat as you move north from the Gulf Coast. The exceptions are special climates around the Great Lakes and the Appalachian Mountains, since large bodies of water and elevation effect our climates. The hardiness map does not work as reliably in the West because of the Rockies and the effect of the Pacific Ocean.
As far as the first fall frost date in our area, of course it varies from year to year; but in general we get the first frost the second or third week of October. Sometimes the first frost is not a killing frost if it dips to only 32 for a brief period, but certainly by the end of October our growing season in eastern MA is over.
Time to finish the fall cleanup and dream of next spring.
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