Saturday, May 2, 2009

Time to start growing that Garden!


Gosh, it has been absolutely beautiful here in Anchorage and around the State!

Have you started your garden yet? I actually started mine in mid March. I have tomatoes, squashes of different varieties, cucumbers, green peppers, jalapeƱos, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, watermelon, pumpkin, onions, garlic, horseradish and quite a few different varieties of herbs. But I am not a master gardener; I just have a super green thumb.

Alaska is a cold climate vegetation growth. You can not grow corn up here due to the sunlight.. as it grows at night, even in the wee night hours as the sun doesn’t totally go down and has a tendency to have a “dusk” for a few hours depending on where you are in the State. The corn I have seen is usually very small ears. I haven't seen large ears except in the Lower 48. I guess this is why so many people try to grow marijuana up here, due to the light.

I have multiple different gardens all over Alaska. I won’t tell you where I am growing most of my veggies this year. But lets say it is going to be some work as I have already mastered Anchorage. I think I was a farmer in a former life.

Mike Nuckols of Alaska Dirt has an AWESOME blog on many different avenues on how Alaska grows things in the Interior (Fairbanks, Delta Junction, Tok and any towns before the Brooks Range) and how to do it on different projects for Alaska. He and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, but he is surely one of the few people I would ask about Alaska growing if I couldn’t figure it out myself. But I have given him something to think about a time or two due to my decent knowledge on plants and what is edible.

What is it that you like to grow in your neck of the woods? My “hope” is to one day have a giant pumpkin to put at the State Fair and win! Small dream I know, but a goal for sure.

4 comments:

  1. You put FLOTUS (aka Michelle) to shame! She' got nothing on you. We love tomatoes and strawberries. We better get out planting now that the weather's so nice!

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  2. Uppy-

    We picked up blueberry and raspberry bushes this week...They grow great up here on 'Lazy'....

    Tip you probably know about:
    To fend off our large (and voracious) moose population we cover our plants with fine-mesh mosquito netting...Moose don't like the feel of it...
    Also have a 'Scare Crow' sprinkler...It's a 'motion-detector'water sprinkler that harmlessly zaps our garden-invading moose with a spray of water...

    How to you keep moose at-bay?

    -Regards,Kenton

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  3. CD's I hang them up in my garden area.. they don't care for the flashing in the eys. And I use Irish Spring. Moose HATE it! I hang it off the trees around the garden.

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  4. Cool about the Irish Spring soap...I'd forgotten about that..(Thought that was just a Fairbanks thing)
    I grew several kinds of dwarf apple trees,a pear tree and even had an Siberian apricot tree in Fairbanks...It was a constant battle protecting them UNTIL I hung Irish Spring slivers from the branches...
    (Also tried Aluminum foil but that never worked well)

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