Monday, February 6 , David Cooke, Grow Appalachia Director, Berea College Appalachian Fund Director and Constance Dykhuizen, JP’s Peace Love Happiness Foundation Director, visited us here at Red Bird Mission.  We were very excited to welcome Constance, and David seeing as this was Constance’s first visit to our site and this also allowed us the opportunity to share our plans and ideals for Grow Appalachia and show them a few things we have going on here at our site.
While here David and I were talking about the warming weather which brought into mention a new, more accurate climate zoning map done by the USDA . He shared with me a great link to these maps .

http://planthardiness.ars.USDA.gov/PHZNWeb/AboutWhatsNew.aspx .

       These new maps have a interactive option, with a map zoom feature and provides information down to and beyond the users local zip code. Although nothing major, the zones have moved slightly north, this will not have a huge impact on our annual planting but could affect perennials, such as small fruits and fruit trees. I have read that many apple trees, for example, are often planted in the wrong zones resulting in insufficient chilling and poor ripening.