Oct 1, 2026 · 4 min · 6 segments
This summer, farmer Dave Dewitt of Truro told me he’s growing something I’ve always thought of as a southern crop — okra.
Elspeth Hay
Viki MerrickHost
This summer, farmer Dave DeWitt of Truro told me he's growing something I've always thought of as a southern crop, okra.
It does need heat, but since we've gone from zone five when I started farming 30, 40 years ago to zone 7B, um, it's no problem.
Zones are shorthand for the way the USDA categorizes and maps where plants will survive based on average temperatures.
In zone five, for instance, the average coldest winter temperatures are between negative 20 and negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and that was the case here on the Cape in the 1990s.
But now our winter temperatures have warmed so much that our lowest averages are between five and 10 degrees Fahrenheit, putting us firmly in zone 7B.
Sarah Motto of Wellfleet, who works as a landscaper, says this is changing all kinds of things.
One of the biggest changes that I've seen, and I would say even, like, around five years ago, is we would plant garlic seed in the fall, always in the fall, around Columbus Day.
And now that's shifted to Thanksgiving.
Cold temperatures are arriving almost five or six weeks later in the fall, and Sarah says she's also noticing that the whole timing of winter and spring is shifting.
We used to start opening up the gardens in the beginning of March, but we found that March can pretty much be like December used to be, where it's still very wintery, and we've shifted our start time till really around April 1st, and we can go into December.
This means the growing season, even as it shifts, is a little bit longer, and this change, too, opens up new crop possibilities.
This summer, farmer Dave DeWitt of Truro told me he's growing something I've always thought of as a southern crop, okra.
It does need heat, but since we've gone from zone five when I started farming 30, 40 years ago to zone 7B, um, it's no problem.
Zones are shorthand for the way the USDA categorizes and maps where plants will survive based on average temperatures.
In zone five, for instance, the average coldest winter temperatures are between negative 20 and negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and that was the case here on the Cape in the 1990s.
But now our winter temperatures have warmed so much that our lowest averages are between five and 10 degrees Fahrenheit, putting us firmly in zone 7B.
Sarah Motto of Wellfleet, who works as a landscaper, says this is changing all kinds of things.
One of the biggest changes that I've seen, and I would say even, like, around five years ago, is we would plant garlic seed in the fall, always in the fall, around Columbus Day.
And now that's shifted to Thanksgiving.
Cold temperatures are arriving almost five or six weeks later in the fall, and Sarah says she's also noticing that the whole timing of winter and spring is shifting.
We used to start opening up the gardens in the beginning of March, but we found that March can pretty much be like December used to be, where it's still very wintery, and we've shifted our start time till really around April 1st, and we can go into December.
This means the growing season, even as it shifts, is a little bit longer, and this change, too, opens up new crop possibilities.
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