how can i know which is my zone?

Hi, i got a land in Peru in a valley in Canete in a place called Pacaran, where the climate is arid tropical and there is sun all the year and there is a lot of water comming from the river but it never rains.

How can i know which is my zone number? where can i see that?



thanks in advance

There is an USDA map somewhere on the net and it shows for the zones for the US. If you know your lowest temperature you can match your zone.
However, the zone map has a lot of limits. It only shows the lowest temperature, but it does not show the temperature swing between day and night nor does it
show how hot it gets, rainfall, wind and other factors. I think the diggers has club done a much better job for Australia, with heat zones, growing days etc.
Here is the link to diggers: webpage, you might better look at your meteorological service..

Ronaldo, I did a google search and found a little bit of info. Maybe some of these will help?

http://www.plantsdb.gr/en/general-cultivation/hardiness-zones/275-hardiness-zones-central-south-america

http://www.backyardgardener.com/zone/sazone.html

thanks for the replies, im new with this thing of map zone, i have some questions....

when people put : Zone 2-4 in Location, that means the USDA map right? that measure the hardiness of the land, right?

but whats hardiness? i speak spanish and i cannont understand that word, i looked in my translator and it says "resistencia " that also means "resistence".

resistence to cold? what does that means? and whats the relation of "resistence" to cold with plants?


Miles i cannot find my zone in the link you posted, im in a place called Pacaran in Peru, its in Canete valley , its in 700 meters of elevation over the sea level and here there is sun all the year and a lot of water comming from the river but it never rains, it rains like 3 times in the whole year. The climate is arid tropical.


thanks for the replies.

Hardiness that refers to the hardiness of plants. So if 9a says -6.7 to 3.9 than that means how cold it can get there. And if you buy a plant then sometimes they say hardy to -5C that means that the plant dies if temperature drops further than -5C. But that does not mean much. How long is it cold? Just a cold snap over night? Hardiness of plants differ according to the person who writes.
When it is cold and wet, plants may die but they might have survived a dry cold.
You might want to look here: webpage
There are as well classifications like "temperate climate" or "subtropical" or "Mediterranean", i like these more because everyone knows that Mediterranean means winter rain and dry hot summers. Still the hardiness zones have their value but they only describe one aspect of a climate.

USDA zones were developed to help people with growing plants in a temperate climate. The vast majority of the United States (with the exception of Hawaii and southern Florida) is temperate, meaning that (1) it gets cold enough to freeze in the winter and (2) that cold weather will last for a number of weeks or months. In the warmer parts of the U.S., plants that are resistant to frost damage can be grown all year long, other plants that are damaged by freezing weather have their season in which they can be grown. In the colder parts of the U.S., zones can be used to predict when the growing season will end in the fall and when planting can start again in the spring.

The USDA zones are NOT useful in the tropics (within 30 degrees of the equator). In the tropics, altitude is a much more important effect than the lowest temperature of the winter, which is how USDA maps are developed. Some tropical crops cannot take the heat of low altitude, and must be grown high in the mountains. There really is no equal to the tropical, high altitude climate in the continental U.S., since that climate doesn't vary as much during the year. The U.S., being further from the equator, will have shorter days and freeing weather in the winter, even if two particular locations seem to be very similar in the summertime.

If your altitude is such that you have occasional freezes, then you can consider yourself to be in something equivalent to zone 8 or 9. I am in a transition area between zone 8 and 9; last winter was a cold zone 8, but the year before was a zone 9 winter. For the cooler half of the year, we have to grow things that are frost tolerant -- brassicas, English peas, fava beans, chicory, onions, etc. Only in the warmer half of the year can we grow corn, beans, squash, and tomatoes.

If you are low enough in altitude never to have freezes, then you are in a truly tropical climate and can look at plant guides from Florida and Hawaii for information.

So I farm in the Colombian Andes, central cordillera. For seeing if plants will grow in my environment access to water and temperature ranges are much more important if the plants are from temperate zones. If they are from central or south america I use altitude.