Find (or make) your microclimates

My complaints about the weather are a standard theme on this blog. I’m a transplanted Californian; winter confuses me. Now that I live on Hoth in Flagstaff, I’ve had to learn about stuff like snowblowers, de-icers, negative temperatures (what the !@#$% kind of hell are those?) and microclimates. That last one is especially important if I want to ripen tomatoes or keep anything alive through the winter. So I’ve spent lots of quality time observing in my garden to see where the warm spots (not many), the windy spots (the entire yard), the extra cold spots (most of the yard), and the dry spots (also the entire yard) are. This kind of close observation is part of what makes gardening such a fascinating hobby. The really ambitious can go a step further and create microclimates. I’m going to try that this year for tomatoes, since I get tired of having to ripen my entire tomato crop in the house every fall.

So, how do you find or create microclimates in your yard? I’ll share a few articles on the topic, then give you one of my shortcut methods for finding the warmest spots.

• The Chicago Daily Herald offers a Q&A with a master gardener on the topic. The piece provides a short, simple overview of microclimates. If you’re new to the concept, start there.
• Less Lawn offers a slightly more detailed introduction.
• So does Today’s Homeowner, and their article includes a link to a Garden Site Microclimate Evaluation Form from the University of California-Riverside Cooperative Extension.
• A post from Good Life Permaculture in Australia offers some creative ideas for creating microclimates.
• And for much more detail, check out this PhD dissertation long article from Mother Earth News.

Microclimates can make the difference between a beautiful specimen and yet another dead plant. In my yard, my front porch faces south and includes lots of concrete plus the giant heatsink known as my house. We’ve had temps down to -1F (or as I refer to any temperature below 0, !@#$% freezing), but I still have pansies and snapdragons alive there--in containers, no less. I’m guessing that means my porch is more than a full zone warmer than the parts of the front yard that are further away from the house.

And that brings me to one of the quickest ways that those of us in snow country can identify at least the warmer and colder microclimates in our yards: observe and take pictures of the snow melt. We got about 2 feet of snow last month (“What the !@#$%?,” says the Californian) with drifts as deep as 4 feet. I spent most of the 2+ weeks it was on the ground scowling and snarling at it. That didn’t make it melt faster, but other factors besides my bad temper did have an effect. Take a look at this picture, taken about 3 weeks after the snowfall:

That’s a great visual demonstration of house-as-heat-sink creating a warm microclimate. The remaining snow in the picture is a few inches deep, and over by my new potager, the snow was about 7” inches deep. How do I know this? Because I sunk into it every. damn. time I carried something to the compost bin. But I digress. My point is that taking pictures of the snow melt around your house can give you a visual reminder of where the warm spots are, so you can take that into account as you plan your garden. You could also note the reverse, where the snow sticks around until you want to take a flamethrower to it to make it go away already. Those are the places you don’t want to plant anything that’s only borderline hardy in your zone.

I went a step further and tried to note where the biggest drifts were, because that tells me something about the wind patterns in the yard. That might be useful information too--if I can ever plant anything. As I write this, my garden is once again buried in snow. !@#$%.