Starting Seeds Indoors

Getting a jump on the growing season up here is the secret to a successful garden in Alaska. That means starting seeds indoors while there is still snow on the ground. It is always foolish to expect any mild spring weather to last without some freezing nights. So you stick with your normal planting schedule and keep your seedlings indoors, or inside a heated greenhouse, until all dangers of a killing frost are over. We can have some sunny warm days, but night time lows can vary from the 20's to mid 30's until late May.

I use very common large commercial shelf units for starting seeds indoors under grow lights. I have a section of my living room set up for growing plants including a potting bench. You can find these common shelves at most home centers, Costco, or online.

These unites come in many sizes to fit your available space from 36 to 48 inches wide and 40 - 72 inches tall. My shelf racks are 48" wide by 18" deep and 72” tall and came with 5 shelves that I can customize to my preference. This size will hold two 10X20 seed flats end to end per shelf and I use a 4 bulb grow light for each shelf. I recently went to a larger shelf unit that is 24” deep and allows four 10X20 seed flats so fit side by side instead of just two end to end and will hold twice as many flats per shelf. This required more light so I replaced some of my 4 bulb lights with 6 bulb grow lights. I also recommend wheels for moving and shelf liners to keep dirt and water spills from falling through.

T8 Florescent Shop Light

The light system I have been using was a 4 bulb T8 Florescent Shop light. I have since replaced the Florescent bulbs with LED bulbs to save on power. I use all LED Grow lights now. I control my lights with a simple timer switch and set my lighting cycle for 16 hours.

I start my tomatoes around early February. I only grow Bush Early Girl Hybrid tomatoes that have larger fruit and are very resistant to disease and do not haver a cracking problem like Extreme Bush Tomato that I was growing. I prefer a more compact bush tomato variety as they do not grow too tall inside my greenhouse.

 
 

I have been very happy with my Parks Seed Company 40 cell Bio-Dome seedling trays that use foam grow plugs. This is a tray of seedlings in my Bio-Dome that look very healthy and almost ready to transplant.

I have had very good results with these trays and almost 100% germination. I will plant 2-3 seeds in each cell and then trim off any extra seedlings leaving just one plant per cell.

In about 2-3 weeks I will transplant my healthy seedlings into 3 1/2 inch pots.

My tomatoes are usually then transplanted again into half gallon pots in April.

It can get crowded in my indoor garden waiting for warm weather before moving plants out to my greenhouse in May. Many years I seem to run out of room. It is necessary to heat my greenhouse at night during May and keeping track of the overnight low temperatures with my home weather station is very important.

Harvest Season in Wasilla

August is the beginning of harvest season at my home in Wasilla, Alaska. Soon in September it will be freezing at night. I will need to add my space heater to the greenhouse to extend the tomato season a little longer and to keep the greenhouse temperature above 40 F at night. I still have bell peppers and eggplant inside a garden hoop tunnel. I have been busy picking everything and busy in the kitchen making my oven roasted tomato sauce.

I have Raspberries along with Gooseberries, and Black Currants. I destem berries and freeze on sheet pans then weigh and vacuum seal in 1 lb bags for storage in my freezer. I will make jams and country wine during the winter.

I will pick the last of my beans - rinse, trim, blanch and freeze them on sheet pans then weigh out and seal in 8 oz vacuum bags to store in my deep freezer

King of the North and North Star bell peppers are good varieties up here. Short season and large fruit  they do well in Wasilla with our short garden season.

I am now growing only Bush Early Girl F1 hybrid tomatoes. They are short season and on smaller sturdy plants and are perfect for my Alaska Grow Buckets in my small greenhouse. They produce large slicing tomatoes that are also great for making sauce and they are VFFNT resistant.

I finally found a used copy of my favorite pickle recipe book, that I lost many years ago. It has lots of good ideas for preserving your garden produce.

I will spend my weekends making sweet pepper pickles and tomato sauce. It will soon be time to clean up the garden for winter. In a few short months I will be checking out the seed catalogs and placing my orders for next year's garden!

Spring Planting Begins...

Every year as the weather warms up again after a long winter all of the gardeners here in the Matsu Valley and all around Alaska rush to get everything planted out in their garden just as early as absolutely possible.

With the return of warm sunny days it is so tempting to set out plants and yet the idea of another killer frost overnight is always in the back of your mind. I took the extra step to purchase a home weather station and tracking overnight low temperatures has saved my bacon several times. I found out that my property can be colder than locations just a few miles away. On May 19th, I recorded an overnight low of 32 degrees. Luckily I took the time, before going to bed, to turn on my small electric space heater in my greenhouse that kept the temperature inside above 40 degrees and protected my sensitive seedlings.  

This graph shows a 3 day temperature record from my home weather station. The Green line is the temperature inside my greenhouse and the red line is the temperature outdoors. As you can see, my greenhouse warms up quickly when the sun is shining on my greenhouse and cools down at night. My property is lower than my neighbors and slopes slightly to the northwest. I am also on the edge of a valley. So all of the cold air flows down to the valley overnight and right through my yard. Some years we might have a mild winter with an early Spring warm-up but you need to stick with your usual planting dates. The climate here in Alaska is definitely warming faster than anywhere else, but our average last spring frost date here is still around May 20. When I first moved to this property in 2004, the well known Iditirod Sled Dog Race had their Official Start here in Wasilla, yet around 2010 they had to move 30 miles further north because of our lack of snow. In the past 10 years, they had to move the whole race to Fairbanks twice and change the route completely due to the lack of snow on the traditional trail. So by following my home weather station I might plant some cold tolerant crops, such as kale, lettuce, and onions, out in my garden by mid May, but sensitive seedlings are not planted outdoors until the last Weekend in May.

I use hoop tunnels and IRT plastic mulch to warm up my raised beds for plants that are not cold tolerant. I even tried using water filled jugs to try and store some of the daytime warmth and protect my plants through our springtime cold nights.

I also constructed these wire covered hoop cages to keep the neighborhood moose from destroying my garden, as they regularly did in the past. Installing a permeant moose-proof fence around my garden was just not in my budget. My tomatoes will be planted in my self watering 5 Gal. Alaska Grow Buckets inside my small greenhouse.

Never Enough Time...

By July the Summer Solstice has past and the days are actually getting shorter again. Even though the long Alaska summer days will still be with us for another month or so. The thought is always on your mind for those of us that depend on our limited growing season. The accelerated plant growth we experience, with our long days, can be easily seen in our yards and how soon the freshly cut grass grows back and requires another day behind the lawn mower…

…Keeping up with weeding, lawn mowing, brush clearing and any new outdoor projects, let alone planting and maintaining a vegetable and/or flower garden does not allow a lot of time to do much else. If you add in gathering and cutting firewood and maybe a few fishing trips - then you can get the idea.

My greenhouse Alaska Grow Buckets are doing great this year and my tomatoes are loaded with fruit.

I have lots of green tomatoes and as usual it seems to be taking forever to see any red ones.

I have been using a different plant support system this year and so far I am very happy to recommend the Tomato Clips that most commercial growers are familiar with. I just hope that the string that I used will be strong enough to support the weight of my fruit loaded plants.

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I also transplanted some spruce saplings from around my property to try and establish a border along one edge of my property.

The best time to plant a tree is always 10 years ago, but the next best time is today. I will never get all of the things done that I would like to complete, in our short Alaska summer. Some years can be cool and rainy and some years the weather can been as near perfect as possible, I can't complain. I will complete some projects and actually look forward to another winter when life slows down and I can just sit inside by the wood stove and enjoy watching it snow outside. Those people that think gardening begins in the spring are wrong …gardening begins in January with a dream.