On any given day, normal people are concerned with the temperature of the air. If you have to walk a few blocks to the subway, or you want to plan a barbecue, the ambient air temperature can affect whether you go out in a t-shirt or hunker down inside. But us gardening folk are a little different from the normies.
We care not only about the air temperature but the temperature of the soil. We may even obsess about it, particularly when winter runs its course, and our green thumbs get to itching.
Soil temperature can dictate the success or failure of a planting. It is the key for tomatoes to emerge from their tiny seeds or parsnips to develop their delectable sugary sweetness. It may be our greatest asset or most grievous bane, depending on what we’re trying to raise in the garden. Knowing what soil temperature is and how to work with it is a huge part of managing your food plot.
Soil Temperature Versus Air Temperature
土壤温度和空气温度一样，都是花园规划的一个要素——尽管你不会在天气频道上听到它。然而，对于一个园丁来说，了解土壤温度的每日波动是在春季和秋季气温变化很大的季节里园艺成功的关键。
The top 6 inches of soil is probably the most important to a gardener. It is where the majority of your plants will be sown, grown, and harvested. Much like the air, the soil has daily highs and lows, but they act somewhat independently of the surface temperature. If you’ve ever been in a root cellar, you’re familiar with the insulative power of earth.
Your garden is similar. The soil will retain heat longer than the air does during some parts of the year, whereas in other seasons, it will stay frozen even if the air feels positively balmy. Being able to understand and work with these seasonal changes will help you advance your garden game from newbie gardener to an experienced green thumb.
How To Measure Soil Temperature
Finding the temperature of the top layer of soil is as easy as using a soil thermometer — a tool that you can find in an online store or garden center. Don’t just indiscriminately jam this rather expensive piece of equipment into the soil, however. Using a screwdriver to make a pilot hole first will help protect the thermometer’s probe for years to come.
然后，根据你使用的温度计的类型，给它几分钟的时间来获得准确的读数。你知道你得耐心等待你的第一个番茄。Surely you can wait the few minutes required for the thermometer to fully register the temperature.
The thermometer should take a reading that is around 5 to 6-inches deep. The visible surface of the soil will sometimes be drastically different than the actual soil around your (hopefully) germinating seeds, so that depth is important. Also, make sure you shade the tool with your hand as you take a reading. Bright sunlight could accidentally mess with your results.
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Finally, take several readings around the garden. The part shaded by the big oak tree may take longer to warm up in the spring than the area in direct sunlight, so plan your plantings accordingly. Also, take measurements in the morning to get the lows and measurements in the late afternoon to determine your soil’s highs.
The average of these numbers should give you a temperature for deciding what’s going in the garden next. Bear in mind, however, if temperatures are too cold at night, sensitive seeds like tomatoes and eggplants may not germinate even if the average is ideal.
If you keep a garden record book or journal (a recommended activity), jot down the values you get along with the date. Though the seasonal soil temperature of your USDA growing zone is somewhat predictable, the actual conditions of your garden’s specific microclimate may be different enough to make an impact.
Knowing the history of how your property warms or cools will give you the heads-up if there’s a warmer or cooler-than-usual year, and hopefully, spare you some unnecessary frustration.
What’s The Optimal Temperature For Planting Vegetables?
Seeds can be tricky little stinkers. While an established plant can sometimes handle a cold snap or heatwave with little damage, germinating sprouts are much more finicky. The majority of leafy greens prefer cooler temperatures and either won’t germinate if it’s too hot or will bolt almost immediately. Lots of annual garden crops, however, prefer it warmer and won’t germinate if it’s too cold.
早春的寒冷和潮湿经常会使缓慢发芽的种子腐烂，让你后悔没有等待。不过，不要让这些不可控的因素让你头晕目眩。种子、土壤和时间的平衡是一种需要一生来掌握和享受的艺术形式。从每一次成功和失败中吸取教训，来年做出必要的改变。
一些园丁通过在理想的环境下在室内开始播种来克服花园中需要的婴儿阶段。幼苗一旦变硬，就可以在室外天气和土壤温度较温和的时候移植。
Deciding exactly when to transplant is one of the bigger gambles every gardener is forced to take. I prefer direct sowing my seeds once the soil is warmed, but living in my zone 6 climate does give me some longer growing opportunities to compensate for any delays.
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Here’s the general range for some common vegetables, taken from one of my favorite organic gardening books,Burpee’s The Complete Vegetable & Herb Gardener. Note the range for successful germination is pretty wide with every category, but a plant does have a smaller, ideal range, usually printed on its seed packet.
Additionally, some cultivars of crops have been specifically bred to handle higher or lower temperatures than their counterparts, so don’t despair if your climate isn’t ideal for your favorite vegetables. Maybe the right variety is still out there, and waiting for you to plant it in climatically correct success.
- 50-85 degrees Fahrenheit: Beet, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, Swiss chard, lettuce, onions, parsley, parsnip, peas, radish, spinach
- 60-85 degrees Fahrenheit: Asparagus, some bean varieties, celery, corn, cucumbers, tomatoes
- 70-85 degrees Fahrenheit: Lima beans, okra, pumpkins, watermelons, peppers
- 80-95 degrees Fahrenheit: Eggplant, melons
My final advice for direct sowing or transplanting seedlings is to not rush things with your enthusiasm for getting back into the spring garden. Take a lesson from my first year of planting okra. My planting of the round, pearly seeds was at the very brink of their cold-tolerance early in the year. I had a pathetic 20% germination rate, and those that did break ground grew at a snail’s pace.
从我悲惨的结果中得到启示，我等了一个月，重新种上了。第二次种植的秋葵有理想的温暖土壤，在很短的时间内发芽，生长得如此有活力，令人震惊。第二代秋葵长得比我的晾衣绳还高，还疯狂地结出豆荚。
Those earlier survivors of my overambition never grew past my waist and made a total of four pods each. You could hear a sad violin playing in the background whenever you looked at them.
The lesson being, even if a seed can germinate, that doesn’t mean it necessarily should. Getting plants in the ground in their ideal soil temperature — even if it means waiting for a month — will give them a much stronger start and will allow them to grow with better vigor. This more than makes up for any time you lost in waiting.
How To Manipulate Soil Temperature
There are many strategies for working with soil temperature to make it more appropriate for your designs. Of course, unless you live in some sort of bio-dome, there’s no fighting the weather or changing the reality that exists outside your window. The following methods may help you achieve your planting goals faster, extend the harvest, or protect your seedling garden in the event of extreme weather shifts.
Your growing zone will determine how drastic the measures you need to take — southern growers past zone 6 may benefit from little more than thoughtful management of mulch or cold frames. Northern growers may need to employ a whole host of covered tunnels and greenhouses to help their plants produce through the extremes of their climate.
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I highly recommendEliot Coleman’s book Four-Season Harvest适合任何种植者，特别是2号到5号种植区的种植者。他在缅因州的花园一年四季都非常高产。如果他能在二月中旬挑选一份新鲜的沙拉，做一份刚刚收获的烤根茎蔬菜汤，那么你也可以!他关于冷框架的构造和使用的文章对冬季园丁特别有见地。
Utilizing Southern Slopes And Ados
If you live in the northern hemisphere, simply placing your garden on a south-facing slope can warm the soil considerably faster than the north-facing alternative. Watch your land in the winter. The snow on southern slopes will always melt first.
If you live on flat land, however, you can purposely slope the soil in your garden in a southerly orientation to take advantage of the sun’s winter angle. This is called ados in France, and there’s usually a slope that’s 4 inches of rise for every foot of garden (a 15-degree angle). You can add a bonus to the warming effect by placing these sloped garden beds against a stone or brick wall. The wall will absorb the day’s heat and help warm the ground through the cold of the night.
Applying Mulch
This thick blanket of organic material can both warm or cool the soil, depending on the conditions of your garden. Mulching seedlings too soon in the spring will slow the soil’s ability to warm with the growing daylight hours. This same insulative protection, however, can protect plants during the worst of summer’s blazing heat by helping retain the morning’s cool soil moisture throughout the day.
By the same token, a thick layer ofmulch in the fall可以让土壤保持更长时间的温暖，让你延长秋收时间，直到第一场致命的霜冻。即便如此，大量的护根物覆盖在“进来”的蔬菜上，会把你的花园变成一个外部储藏室，让你在暴风雪中成功地挖出卷心菜、胡萝卜和防风草。
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Plastic coverings are also used as mulch, but I always feel funny recommending any single-use plastic product. When organic material does the same job while simultaneously enriching the soil and not contributing to any landfill, the short-term convenience of plastic mulch seems wasteful in comparison.
Cold Frames
这些简单的工具对调节土壤温度非常有帮助。它们本质上是放置在花园空间上的无底洞玻璃盖盒子。在阳光明媚的日子里，这些盒子可以使室内的温度升高20度，不过10度的温差更常见。
With some careful venting during sunny days, these frames make it possible to harvest frost-free food year-round. The best part? They are easily made from recycled materials — an old window mounted on some scrap wood serves the purpose as well as a store-bought model.
Soil Solarization
有时候，让土壤变暖不仅仅是为了帮助植物。如果你发现你的菜园面临着巨大的问题，比如难以克服的越冬害虫，或真菌来源的枯萎病，在你收获番茄之前偷走了每一个番茄，那么对土壤进行日光照射是一个让你的菜园重新开始的自然方法。
This process takes place during the hottest part of your summer — either July or August in the northern hemisphere — and involves covering selected areas of cleared, watered garden beds with a close layer of plastic. Left in place for at least six weeks, this super-intense covering will heat the top 6 inches of soil to deadly levels (around 150 degrees Fahrenheit). Unless you take a summer gardening pause for the treatment, you’ll have to treat the garden in sections.
High Tunnels And Greenhouses
Of course, to really fight the wild variations in your climate, you can install structures like high tunnels or a greenhouse. These require ample space in many circumstances, so they’re probably more functional on a homestead than a suburban backyard.
Gardeners have been both fighting and embracing the soil temperature of their cultivated plot for generations. These methods are merely a selection of the many ideas out there. From cloches to chenilles to low tunnels to buried greenhouses (yes, that’s a thing), there are many more ways to both understand and manipulate growing conditions. S