Gardening in Alaska (house, live, garden)

[Eaber2Alaska]

I know there are different threads that touch on this topic here and there and the information is available online but I wanted to create a thread that is first hand experience with gardening in AK. Where do you live and what do you garden? What are your experiences? What time of year do crops grow best? Do you have any pictures of your garden?

[gobrien]

Well, crops grow best during our short but intense summers. I grew up in the interior and the family garden had a lot of root vegetables, greens and annual flowers, as well as green beans and peas and squash. My dad had garden soil trucked in.

[Eaber2Alaska]

Theoretically could you provide additional sustenance for a family growing food in AK?

[Marty Van Diest]

Originally Posted by Eaber2Alaska

Theoretically could you provide additional sustenance for a family growing food in AK?

You can easily grow enough potatoes and carrots to feed your family all year. I'm just getting into gardening myself. My wife is big into landscape type gardening with flowers and perrenials and I am just starting to grow some vegetables. Had some nice potatoes, cabbages, broccoli, carrots and peas this year. I built a little greenhouse this fall and want to try some cucumbers and tomatoes in it next year.

[tigre79]

This year was my experimental year, learning to garden in a subarctic rain forest. I got thirty pounds of potatoes in about 12 square feet of ground space. Broccoli and cauliflower did well, all sorts of greens and cabbages love it here. Slugs can be a problem in wetter areas. You can grow some warm-weather stuff in the Interior without a greenhouse (better with one though), but you still need relatively early-maturing varieties. In coastal areas a greenhouse is necessary for tomatoes, and you still may wind up with few ripe ones by the first frost. Raspberries do very well also, btw. Our house came with quite a lot of them and we got nearly 20 gallons this summer.