Solstice garden mapping
A little while back I mentioned in a post about my chickens egg laying habits and mentioned a site that could help you determine your daylight lengths. It's also great for learning your local sunrise and sunset times and angle of the sun to the earth at solar noon. (You can find the site here)
This weekend on the 21st, at least in the northern hemisphere, is the winter solstice. That means it will be the shortest day of the year for us. Take a look at this chart and you'll see what I mean:
So what's the big deal? Nothing tremendous, but it does offer an opportunity to do something that I've been thinking about for some time. Begin my backyard garden solar mapping. Now solar mapping is the term that I've decided to give this process, so googling it may not return anything about it, but I think it is an apt name for what I hope to accomplish.
Being that the Winter solstice is the lowest that the sun will sit in our horizon for the entire year and that it will provide us with the least opportunity for solar gain in the garden, what I am planning to do is to take some measurements, some pictures and some notes that I can then add to my garden journal binder as a point of reference for the future. I've learned that the more information that I have about the particular micro climates that I have in my garden and when and where the sun hits the earth, the better decision I can make about what kind of plants that I can plant in that part of the yard at different parts of the year.
Another great tool that I have found was on wundergound.com where, after a little clicking and searching by zip code, I was able to find the calendar shown above. It shows the weather for a full month at a glance. You can view on one page what the actual temperature is in a particular city in the US as well as information about what the weather was like for the year before.
This is another great tool for the home gardener to have at their disposal and I'll be printing and including this calendar in my garden journal as well for quick reference throughout next year.
The weather may not be letting me plant and prepare, but after a month of no growing I'm starting to feel that itch that hits me at the beginning of the year to start thinking about next year. I guess I will manage to hold it off for another couple of weeks. Hope the holidays are coming together well for you all.
All the best!
P~
This weekend on the 21st, at least in the northern hemisphere, is the winter solstice. That means it will be the shortest day of the year for us. Take a look at this chart and you'll see what I mean:
So what's the big deal? Nothing tremendous, but it does offer an opportunity to do something that I've been thinking about for some time. Begin my backyard garden solar mapping. Now solar mapping is the term that I've decided to give this process, so googling it may not return anything about it, but I think it is an apt name for what I hope to accomplish.Being that the Winter solstice is the lowest that the sun will sit in our horizon for the entire year and that it will provide us with the least opportunity for solar gain in the garden, what I am planning to do is to take some measurements, some pictures and some notes that I can then add to my garden journal binder as a point of reference for the future. I've learned that the more information that I have about the particular micro climates that I have in my garden and when and where the sun hits the earth, the better decision I can make about what kind of plants that I can plant in that part of the yard at different parts of the year.
Another great tool that I have found was on wundergound.com where, after a little clicking and searching by zip code, I was able to find the calendar shown above. It shows the weather for a full month at a glance. You can view on one page what the actual temperature is in a particular city in the US as well as information about what the weather was like for the year before.This is another great tool for the home gardener to have at their disposal and I'll be printing and including this calendar in my garden journal as well for quick reference throughout next year.
The weather may not be letting me plant and prepare, but after a month of no growing I'm starting to feel that itch that hits me at the beginning of the year to start thinking about next year. I guess I will manage to hold it off for another couple of weeks. Hope the holidays are coming together well for you all.
All the best!
P~
1 comment:
Thank you! You always have such interesting and helpful information on your posts. Keep up the good work. :)
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