Gardening In Alaska - how unique climate affects gardening - Brief Article

Flower & Garden Magazine, Oct, 2000 by Keith Muraoka

Alaska boasts many interesting and unusual plants, and residents who are committed to growing and keeping them.

Some home gardeners are spoiled. Spoiled rotten, in fact, and unless you've had to deal with wandering moose in your vegetable garden, you haven't experienced anything. So says Jeff Lowenfels, garden writer for the Anchorage Daily News in Anchorage, Alaska, and a past president of the Garden Writers Association of America.

No fighting measly snails and slugs in Alaska gardens. Lowenfels regularly finds himself face-to-face with a 7-foot tall, 1,800-pound moose munching carrots in his vegetable garden. Of course, everything is big in Alaska, no matter what Texans might say.

"If Alaska were split in half to become two states, Texas would still only be the third largest state in the country," Lowenfels says, with only a slight smirk on his face. In Anchorage--Alaska's biggest city encompassing more than half the state's half-million population--virtually everyone gardens, and gardens big, according to Lowenfels.

Despite a growing season that averages only 105 days, Alaskans have a weather condition that is almost unequaled. Specifically, Alaskan home gardeners encounter no darkness during their growing season between June and August. With all that sunlight, everything tends to grow faster and bigger than what home gardeners in the lower 48 states are accustomed to.

Would you believe 80-pound cabbages? And zucchini that are the size of baseball bats? How about having to mow your lawn three times a week? That's what Lowenfels has to do during the summer. Those baseball bat-sized zucchini also are "as tender as any six-inch zucchini you'd ever want to eat," he says.

The first question Lowenfels usually encounters from gardening strangers is, "What--gardening in Alaska?" He maintains, however, that his biggest problem is figuring out what not to grow.

As might be expected, vegetables that do best are the cool-season types like cole crops. Cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts predominate, but he also grows potatoes and sugar snap peas. The latter will grow 20-foot vines during summer, Lowenfels says.

Flowers that do well include many annuals like marigolds, pansies and snap-dragons. Geraniums, dianthus, cosmos, sweet peas and even fuchsias are also popular. Yes, fuchsias--those frost-tender plants that seemingly shiver their leaves off whenever temperatures drop below 50 degrees--are a garden mainstay in Alaska.

Lowenfels maintains that Alaskan home gardeners have gone crazy over hanging baskets. And, since many fuchsias are trailing types that look great in hanging baskets, they have become maddeningly popular. Fuchsias are grown in hanging baskets in summer and can be seen everywhere in Anchorage--in front of the bus depot, police station and department stores.

Lowenfels is active in the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce's Beautification Committee, which embarked on a massive flower campaign a few years back that is still going strong. The annual bulb-planting program resulted in 15 tons of tulips and daffodils being planted. Anchorage is second only to Holland.

However, fuchsias are still regarded as the most valuable flower. According to Lowenfels, in winter some nurseries convert their heated greenhouses into "rental space" for hanging fuchsias. "One nursery overwinters 30,000 hanging baskets at $50 a shot for winter's nine months," he says. "Unfortunately, there are no visitation rights."

Other home gardeners resort to ingenious means to protect their fuchsias, he says. "They place their plants in old refrigerators and foam tubs, then bury them eight feet below the surface in their yards. I know one man who uses the crawl space underneath his floor to over winter roses."

It should be noted that while daytime temperatures range from 55-to-85 degrees during summer, the soil often remains much colder, since the season is so short. During the rest of the year, the ground freezes eight-to-12 feet below the surface. That's easily accomplished when temperatures often hover around the zero mark.

To warm the soil, even in summer, they use lots of plastic. "We have a special love affair with plastic," Lowenfels says, jokingly. Plastic--in the form of tents and individual plant "caps"--can extend the growing season two-to-four weeks and also make for a more successful growing season.

"We'll do anything we can to heat the soil," he admits. "I know one gardener that ran hot water pipes underneath his corn beds."

As for the problems with munching moose, Lowenfels uses extra high fences around his garden. He even hangs bars of soap from corner posts to repel the moose.

"We've discovered many things grow in Alaska simply because nobody has tried them before," Lowenfels says. "We've come a long way from having to worry about the necessities of life like heat and food. Now, one of the necessities is a garden."

As for Lowenfels, who came to Anchorage in 1975 from New York, he maintains, "I'll never move back."