Essay by Eric Worrall
Tasmanian academic Edward Doddridge has presented his proof the climate end times are upon us – earlier crop planting times, and some dead seaweed.
What planting tomatoes shows us about climate change
Published: November 22, 2022 6.04am AEDTEdward Doddridge
Research Associate in Physical Oceanography, University of Tasmania
There’s a piece of gardening lore in my hometown which has been passed down for generations: never plant your tomatoes before Show Day, which, in Tasmania, is the fourth Saturday in October. If you’re foolhardy enough to plant them earlier, your tomato seedlings will suffer during the cold nights and won’t grow.
But does this kind of seasonal wisdom still work as the climate warps? We often talk about climate change in large-scale ways – how much the global average surface temperature will increase.
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Changes everywhere
Climate change really does mean change – both large scale and small. From extreme weather to ecosystems changing all the way through to the time when you can plant tomatoes.
For gardeners, this means accepted wisdom no longer holds. In Tasmania, you can now safely plant tomatoes 18 days earlier than you could in the 1900s. That’s because minimum temperatures in October are now about 1℃ warmer than they were in 1910.
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Hotter water has also killed off almost all Tasmania’s giant kelp, and made it possible for warm-water fish to migrate south.
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Frankly the climate crisis was more interesting before this big reveal. It’s like sitting through two hours of horror show buildup, only to find the monster behind the closed door is a well behaved poodle. “You must spend trillions on this crisis, or our abundance of early tomato crops will continue!”.
Stay tuned for more Doddridge reveals of why we must mortgage our children’s future combatting the climate crisis.
<img src=”” title=”Tasmanian Climate Crisis: Early Tomato Planting and Some Dead Seaweed” />