Climatezones in Sweden

Gardening in Sweden is just a little more complex than it is in Belgium. When you go out to buy plants in a garden centre, you will see that they are all divided into different climate zones. And if you think about how quickly the climate is changing, you will understand the importance of picking the right ones for your garden. You need to be very conscious of which types of plants to buy. Don’t go driving south to a plant shop if you count on gardening in the north of the country – it simply won’t work…

As you will see on the map, the difference between Stockholm (zone 2) and Åmot (zone 6) is rather big, while the distance covers merely 200 km. Bearing this in mind, I bought an apple and a cherry tree for climate zone 5 and a plum tree for climate zone 6, since I couldn´t find all types of trees for climate zone 6... Hard to imagine at first, since it was only 1 zone apart from ours, yet I should have known better. After almost 4 years I still have no single apple and our sweet cherry tree almost froze to death. Yet for the first time this year we have 2 plums – pretty impressing.

The seeds I used for our vegetables are a mixture of local seeds and seeds I bought in Belgium. I must say I’m very curious about the results of this little experiment. The Belgian seeds I used in the greenhouse are doing very well. The small ones we planted in our garden late May went through a very tough time midst of June. On June 21^st for example, we had some minor frost so most of our delicious beans and potatoes froze. We do realise this climate is not the easiest to deal with...