When and how plants grow depend absolutely on conditons of the place where they are grown. Topics argued on this website are mostly based on the plants we grow in our greenhouse, so it is a good idea to know about its location and climatic background.

Location

I and my family live in Shikoku Island of Japan and our greenhouse is just by the side of our house. It is several kilometers from the south coastline of the island. In other words, our greenhouse is at around 33.4°N and 133.2°E, a few miles north from the coastline of Shikoku Island facing the Pacific Ocean.

Climatic background

People may think that our place is in a moderate climate as it situates in a transitional border from temperate zone to subtropics. Actually it is not so moderate because it is as hot as subtropics in summer and as cool as temperate zone in winter.

We have good weather in major part of a year(yearly means of duration of sunshine around 2,200 hrs. *1) but rainfall is enough and rather abundant in total (yearly means of precipitation around 2,600 mm *2). It is windy through a year because of topographical conditions of our place.

In summer, from July till August, the temperature goes over 32°C almost every afternoon and usually does not go down below 24°C. It lasts for about 6 weeks. There is a rainy season for about 2 months which leads summer. In rainy season the temperature is moderate though, the sunlight is weaker and the air humidity is near 90%. It is the best season for fungi and the worst season for bulbs and succulents!

In winter we have little snow yet have light frost almost every day. It is sunny and very windy. The temperature may go up to 14°C in the day. It does not go down to -3°C in ordinary days but there are a few nights of under -7°C in stormy weather.

Few typhoons can visit our place during summer and early autumn. Then there could be a risk that terrible winds should blow our greenhouse away. We often rigged out our greenhouse so the risk is now reduced, I think.