New Study Backs Others: Growing Season Lengthening In The United States

It's well into October and the rose bush in front of my house has suddenly decided to put out a whole bunch of beautiful blooms.

A rose blooms in my St. Albans garden last weekend.
The growing season is lengthening allowing spectacles
like this October bloom.  

Foliage season in Vermont this year has been augmented by lush green grass in the fields, flowering gardens, and people still happily harvesting vegetables from their  back yards.

While much of Vermont has had some frost this autumn, some areas, particularly the Champlain Valley, hasn't had a freeze yet.

That's in keeping with a new federal Environmental Protection Agency study that says the growing season in the United States has, on average, lengthened by about two weeks in the past century.

That's one more piece of evidence that the planet is warming.

Another study released last winter from Plos One said flowers are blooming earlier and earlier in the spring.

For some reason, the growing season in the West is getting longer faster. There, its gone up by 22 days in the past century. Here in the East, we get about eight extra days of gardening per year.

The median date for a first freeze of the season in Burlington is October 7. This year, Burlington hasn't had a freeze yet, and none is in the forecast for the next few days.

The studies that show a longer growing season doesn't mean we won't have occasional late frosts in the spring or early frosts in the fall. It just means the trend line is we get to enjoy our gardens for longer periods of time each  year.

A couple spectacular blooms on my rose bush are fading after putting on a show this past weekend. But two more blooms are ready to pop. It's supposed to be mild over the next couple of days, so my roses will give me more late season joy it looks like.

Bottom line: Global warming is bad, but there are a few silver linings that come with it. Or in my case, white roses.