The first ever Gardenstew perennial flower baseline study for 2013 has concluded. I wish to thank everybody that participated. Throughout the 2013 growing season, 168 entries covering a broad spectrum of flowers were submitted by Gardenstew members for the study. The bloom dates as well as the baselines established will provide an invaluable resource in years to come. As we have seen in recent years our climate is changing. For those of us in temperate latitudes either north or south, we have witnessed a gradual but steady shift toward the polar regions. To document those changes takes time and only through the participation of people like the Gardenstew members will the effects of this change in climate become evident. It is hoped that if we can continue the documentation next growing season and compare the dates of each survey period. We will also be able to watch fluctuations in hardness zones, baseline movement and establish new references. At the very least participating members have documented the exact date many of their perennial flowers bloom. This will also act as a active guide for our flower gardens. We interrupt this post for a a bit of technical information, I did not want to throw too much technical info this study but I found this short definition from Wikipedia interesting: Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation). Because many such phenomena are very sensitive to small variations in climate, especially to temperature, phenological records can be a useful proxy for temperature in historical climatology, especially in the study of climate change and global warming. For example, viticultural records of grape harvests in Europe have been used to reconstruct a record of summer growing season temperatures going back more than 500 years. In addition to providing a longer historical baseline than instrumental measurements, phenological observations provide high temporal resolution of ongoing changes related to global warming. We now return you to our regularly scheduled post all ready in progress. The data collected has been summarized and some filters applied to sort the data. More study will be applied to the submitted data to extract additional family and genus information Data collection references: Data submitted by members: http://www.gardenstew.com/about28586.html Compiled data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... vOXc#gid=0 A summary of the sorted data: Number of participating members = 9 Number of flower entries = 168, +2 reference(2012) = 170 Earlist entry = March 3 latest entry = September = 7 Hardiness zones represented = 7 Coldest zone: 5a Warmest zone: Australia - zone 4 (US zone 10) Countries represented = 3 Plant Families represented = 40 Genus Represented = 84 Baselines established = 8, +1 reference(2012) = 9 Distance of the shortest baseline = 7.5 miles Distance between the longest baseline = 1480 miles, the 2012 reference distance was 1524 miles. Same hardiness zone baselines = 1 Northernmost location: Beaverton, Ontario, Canada Southernmost participating location: Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia Again, thank you for your participation, Jerry P.S. Anyone for 2014?
It will be interesting to see if there are any changes in 2014. Thanks for compiling it all Jerry. Data like this is amazing when you can start to notice patterns / make observations. Do you need help creating a 2014 document?
Jerry I just wanted to say a BIG thank you for all the work you put into creating this database for us. I hope you'll get many more members participating for 2014.
I'll participate too. I'm just a little busy during the summer so I had a bit of trouble remembering to add new info. I'll try to do better this year!
I got some info entered last year but then my gardening activity came to an abrupt stop. Hopefully, I can do better this year.
