"MONTPELIER, Vt. -- While skeptics can go on denying climate change, gardeners know better. In our little patch of this globally warmed world, a century or more of accumulated growing wisdom is being thrown out the greenhouse door with bathwater and baby."
"Last year, for example, the sweet peppers did poorly because a favorite gardening maxim let me down: "Six months from the first thunderstorm, expect the first frost." That old adage failed spectacularly when the peppers planted after a warm Mother's Day drencher were subjected to frost two days -- not six months -- later. Stunned and stunted, they never recovered. ...
2012 has been as crazy: The U.S. experienced the warmest spring on record, a jaw-dropping 5.2 degrees above the long-time average! But mixed with the heat was some real whiplash weather. In New England, for example, 80 degree temps in March were followed a day later by a plunge to 20 degrees. Apples, plums and pears, fooled into blossoming early by the heat, were damaged by frost and will produce lower yields this year."
Karen O'Leary reports for The Daily Climate via Blue Ridge Press June 21, 2012.
