Pros and Cons Of Homesteading in Northern vs Southern Climates

Most people assume that the warmer the climate, the easier and better it is for growing lots of produce. But colder climates have some benefits too. For people who have experienced both, what are the pros and cons of each in your opinion and which one would you choose?

I cant say that I have experienced both as I am in sunny Texas.

A homestead has more than just plants though being to have longer days to harvest is one benefit.

What about having to get out in 6 inches of snow to feed the animals?

Anne Miller wrote:I cant say that I have experienced both as I am in sunny Texas.

A homestead has more than just plants though being to have longer days to harvest is one benefit.

What about having to get out in 6 inches of snow to feed the animals?

If we're just talking about fruits and vegetables though, which would you prefer?

There are so many factors that affect the climate as well as the lattitude. I'm 57 degrees North here but in a mild maritime climate - so no penetrating frosts and rain anytime of year. I love the long days of summer when it never really gets dark, but we do different things in winter in long dark nights (!). Nothing grows much though between October and April, so we can harvest root crops and some perennial greens, but need to rely on storage for many fruit and vegetables.

Nancy Reading wrote:There are so many factors that affect the climate as well as the lattitude. I'm 57 degrees North here but in a mild maritime climate - so no penetrating frosts and rain anytime of year. I love the long days of summer when it never really gets dark, but we do different things in winter in long dark nights (!). Nothing grows much though between October and April, so we can harvest root crops and some perennial greens, but need to rely on storage for many fruit and vegetables.

Thanks Nancy. I imagine your climate must be similar to Vancouver Island where I grew up. We were at 50 degrees north though so  bit less extreme. It was great for growing greens and most veggies,but the damp conditions were often a problem, and makes it hard for storage as well. I'm curious do you choose to live there or would you live elsewhere if you had the choice.

Yes, I gather our climate is pretty similar to parts of the PNW.

Dareios Alexandre wrote:I'm curious do you choose to live there or would you live elsewhere if you had the choice.

We're mostly here for financial reasons. Land, even poor arable land is pretty expensive in the UK if you want to live on it. And we love the Scottish Highlands - clean air and dark skies, distractingly beautiful. I like to live near the sea too.
I always think 'be careful what you wish for' - I might wish for a very little more warmth in summer, but then our soil is so shallow that it wouldn't take much for us to go into drought. Our winters are so mild that many mediterranean plants are quite happy here (given a well drained spot!). There are other aspects that suit me, like lack of streetlights and quiet roads (relatively speaking) so no, I wouldn't want to move

Pro for warmer winters = more of a growing season.  Con of warmer winters = the bugs don't always properly die off the way they do in places with colder winters.

It's a tough decision!

Riona Abhainn wrote:Pro for warmer winters = more of a growing season.  Con of warmer winters = the bugs don't always properly die off the way they do in places with colder winters.

Sounds blissful!

Nancy Reading wrote:Yes, I gather our climate is pretty similar to parts of the PNW.

Dareios Alexandre wrote:I'm curious do you choose to live there or would you live elsewhere if you had the choice.

We're mostly here for financial reasons. Land, even poor arable land is pretty expensive in the UK if you want to live on it. And we love the Scottish Highlands - clean air and dark skies, distractingly beautiful. I like to live near the sea too.
I always think 'be careful what you wish for' - I might wish for a very little more warmth in summer, but then our soil is so shallow that it wouldn't take much for us to go into drought. Our winters are so mild that many mediterranean plants are quite happy here (given a well drained spot!). There are other aspects that suit me, like lack of streetlights and quiet roads (relatively speaking) so no, I wouldn't want to move

I find it handy to think of 'pole-wards' and 'equator-wards', although there are differences between the Southern & Northern Hemispheres of course.

Our climate has effectively moved equator-wards by a significant extent in my five or so decades of growing: we're often significantly drier & hotter in Spring & Summer now.

So we need to learn new techniques for keeping the soil moist in dry conditions, and work harder at storing & moving rainwater from Autumn & Winter now.  But the slugs are less of a challenge in the garden in hot, dry conditions, for example.

Then again, we need different varieties & types of crops.

Our 100+ year old brick-built house is also in need of eco-retrofit to cope with hotter summers & more driving rain in winter.

So I'm inclined to say, the biggest challenge is climate instability, at many latitudes?

I think you have forgotten the important measure.
What is it like for riding motorcycles on the road!!
Everything else is really unimportant.

John C Daley wrote:I think you have forgotten the important measure.
What is it like for riding motorcycles on the road!!
Everything else is really unimportant.

 Only if you like to ride - But driving may be an issue if you are not used to the conditions.

Dareios Alexandre wrote:Most people assume that the warmer the climate, the easier and better it is for growing lots of produce. But colder climates have some benefits too. For people who have experienced both, what are the pros and cons of each in your opinion and which one would you choose?

I have gardened in southern California, Missouri, New Jersey, and Minnesota. The summers here in northern Minnesota are so unpleasantly hot, that it's hard to get out and do real work when it's in the 70s or, gods forbid, the 80s. I can't really imagine being effective south of here and I might prefer being more northerly. But there's obviously a huge variation in what humans like, so YMMV.

Where I live, if I had my act together (and no job), it wouldn't be any problem at all growing and storing enough food to keep my family alive through the year -- though I'm really only hitting that goal on squash, potatoes, alliums, and kimchi.

Anne's comment about feeding the animals in six inches of snow doesn't really put me off, but we sometimes have a lot of snow (like, say, three feet or more) and getting through that is kind of a bear.

year-round gardening is nice, but the bugs and diseases are a whole different kettle of fish in a non-hard-freeze or non-snow environment.
I moved from maybe zone 5 to 9b (just a bit shy of tropical) and while it's lovely to not have a dormant season, and to have tomatoes in the winter, it's a bear the first few years to realize you can't grow tomatoes in the summer outside of a greenhouse, for example, because you will not have a blessed plant left.

another issue with year-round gardening is that planning is much more intense than just preparing all the beds in the fall and then planting seeds in the spring. Unless your space is unlimited, you're always evaluating whether that kale can stay for another 6 months or whether those peppers probably have done their best and need to go. You're always ripping things out before they're "done", and in fact judging whether things are done can be really hard. There's always also the dance of what can grow together with what as you're filling the resulting holes in your garden. You're always starting seeds or on the lookout for starts.
I find that honestly water availability (and resulting impacts from pests) is more of a limiter than the occasional cold snap.

another issue with the south (assuming you're contrasting from colder northern climes to warmer southern ones, US style- i live in the southern hemisphere so it's not quite the case) can be humidity.
I was used to humid summers and dry falls and winters. I learned to dry food in the fall and winter, only to discover that when I grow my daikon radishes and napa cabbage here in my super-humid climate, I can't dry anything! Even if we get a dry snap and i can dry something, it won't store well since our ambient humidity is generally over 50% (often WELL over 50%). I had to learn new techniques for long-term storage.

I have lived in both coolish and warmish weather and yes, each has plusses and minuses.  If I had to put a finger on it, I would go with a colder climate.

In the United States, especially in the Midwest, a northern location can still get plenty warm in the summer and allow for all sorts of veggies.  I am thinking of my grandmother's garden.  My grandfather, a farmer. would simply use his disk to disk up one row for my grandmother's garden--which made for a huge garden.  Out of that garden she made an enormous amount of veggies that lasted long into the Autumn.

And in the winter, a cold climate can burn wood for heat--I don't know what a plot of land can grow that will cool the hot and extremely humid summers that I have now.

Of course, my growing season is longer and snow removal is a much more significant concern.  But a part of me will always pine for those colder climates!


Eric