somewhat south of here

"depending on where you live, if you're a gardener, you may live somewhat south of there." joel m. lerner_____________________________________________________but before i could plant the spuds i found three rouge jerusalem artichokes that needed to be moved...nothing new about a rouge sunchoke...you can never find them all at harvest...but a couple of things stand out here...one climate related and the other a measure of productivity...first and foremost in my mind it the fact that these plants have arrived fully nine days ahead of their appearance last season and earlier than they showed in 2013 as well...you could argue that last spring was cooler than this spring but that might be the point...the trend is up and this native perennial has popped up earlier each of the last three years at least...and the garlic was up in the garden and at home two days earlier this year..and was the fact that i managed to pull the sub-tropical perennial teosinte zea diploperennis through three northwest indiana winters dumb luck and heavy mulching...or are conditions warming a bit...the usda hardiness zone map ans moved this area one zone south...what joel is talking about...and one good reason why i am growing perennial native species...to try and gauge if there is an impact...secondly as i dug out the trench for the potatoes i uncovered another thirty rouges...with last saturday's haul that is a total of one hundred and nine rouges...the jerusalem artichoke is a relentless producer and relentlessly invasive...healthy too...if you could work out the storage problem you could feed many people