Spring Gardening in the SubArctic

Our cabin with the greenhouse down by the river

With March comes the promise of Spring. The days get longer. The snow begins to melt. The frozen river begins to open up. There is less need for the heater. It’s time to plant the seeds for the garden and prepare for the long days of summer. Living offgrid in western Alaska only magnifies our desire for fresh produce.

Last year, we made raised garden beds out of old 4-wheeler tires that Gregg had stacked outside of his shop, having been thrown aside when folks had him install new tires for them. After cutting the inner rims out of the top and bottom of the tires, they served as vegetable and planters both in our garden space. I’ve been doing some reading about soil-warming techniques, and, living where we do, permafrost isn’t very far down and our soil stays pretty cold all summer, even with the long days of sunshine. Cold soil makes it nearly impossible to grow most vegetables. Even in the raised beds, brussel sprouts, beets, turnips, and mustard greens just laughed at me last year. This year, I’ll be trying some new vegetable varieties including Improved Dwarf Siberian Kale, Gourmet Mesclun Salad Mix, BC-2 Zucchini, and Early Prolific Straightneck Summer Squash!

Kitchen table planting station

My seeds all come from Denali Seed Company, known as “America's foremost authority on cool climate gardening,” because they have over 40 years of experience with the various climates of Alaska. We are considered zone 2a for plant hardiness in the Unalakleet area, but even that has quite a bit of variation. Even though we are only eight miles east of the actual village of Unalakleet, which sits on the Bering Sea coast, we are surrounded by hills and the temperature at our cabin can be up to 15 degrees cooler in the winter or warmer in the summer than the village. We also get a lot less wind. Because of this, we should be able to grow some decent vegetables. However, the drawback is that we still have such a short growing season.

I learn a little more every year. The year before last, my first year with the greenhouse, I started everything too late, since the greenhouse wasn’t ready to use until the first week of June. I also learned that our garden soil was just too cold, resulting in almost a total loss for kale, radishes, beets, carrots, cabbage, and mustard greens. My answer was to build the raised beds with the old tires. After a lot of work incorporating organic soil boosters and fertilizers, I felt ready to try it again the next year.

Kitchen table half-full of seedlings

Last year, I learned that onions, cabbage, and carrots are a lost cause, even in the greenhouse, so I’ve given up on those vegetables. We also only harvested a handful of very small tomatoes before the season was over, so I’ve started those seeds earlier this year, Polar Beauty and Early Tanana, and will plan a way to keep the greenhouse warm longer into fall. The peppers acted the same was as the tomatoes, but I’m not ready to give up on them yet, so I’ve planted three varieties this year, California Wonder, New Ace, and Hungarian Yellow Wax. However, my Beit Alpha Cucumbers and Provider Bush Beans did well in the greenhouse, so I will plant more of them this year. My zucchini did well in pots outside last year, so I will try to plant some of those along with summer squash into raised garden beds in addition to having them in pots.

Window shelf behind the couch

The only vegetables that I’ve found to thrive in our garden’s cold soil are peas of any sort and rhubarb. Because it takes a lot of peas to have enough to can, I’m going to plant three varieties this year; Freezonian, Early Frosty, and Maestro. The peas can be planted directly into the garden soil as soon as the last freeze has come and gone; they’ll even withstand a light freeze here and there, so I love them!

Gregg also made several trellises out of Iron Dog and Iditarod trail marker stakes that he gathered along the river and cross country trail between here and the village. The trails get marked with stakes every 100 yards or so in March. When the river breaks up, the stakes end up in the bottom of the river or out in the Bering Sea, so I feel like we do our part to keep the environment clean by gathering them and reusing them. It’s also free wood that can be used in a variety of ways around our homestead! They make perfect trellises for climbing veggies like cucumbers, beans, peas, and zucchini, and I use them to stake my tomato and pepper plants.

Making good use of trail markers.

The nearest greenhouse is in Anchorage, a 400 mile flight away, so I don’t have the luxury of buying seedlings, which means that even my herbs have to be started from seed. Cilantro, Bouquet Dill, and Large Leaf Italian Basil are my favorites, and I hope to use them in homemade salsa, pesto, and pickles that I will can this fall. We are still eating Bread & Butter Pickles made with last year’s cucumbers, and pesto made with last year’s basil. I’ve also recently learned that most flowers from edible plants are also edible, so no more throwing away those tops that I pinch off. This year, they are going into summer salads!

Spring is also the time to take stock of, and start cleaning out, our freezer. We have a freezer in town at Gregg’s small engine repair shop where we store mostly meat (caribou, moose, and salmon), cheese (we stock up when it’s on sale), and berries that I’ve picked both on the tundra and in our own raspberry patch. By April, our freezer is running pretty low. Any berries left from last year get made into pancakes, muffins, or dessert bars, and I make jelly from juice that I had strain off of the berries after they thaw. I hate to throw anything away, so I had save the juice, instead of straining it down the sink. Sometimes, I even add a little dried Lavender that a retiring teacher gave to me after clearing out her kitchen pantry. After making lavender tea (steeping the lavender in water and straining it through a cheesecloth), I mix it with the blueberry juice to create an absolutely delightful jelly! Straight lavender jelly tastes similar to fireweed jelly, quite a treat!

Fireweed Tea in the making

Unfortunately, I have yet to successfully grow lavender. However, I do grow other types of edible flowers for medicinal and canning purposes. Bachelor buttons make a delicious, pinkish-purple jelly that tastes like strawberries, and Calendula makes a golden-colored jelly that has a citrusy taste. I also harvest wild Dandelions in May to make an amazing honey-flavored jelly. Just remember to pick Dandelions that are not near a road or neighborhood that might contain exhaust fumes or pesticides. Thankfully, we have fields and fields of them miles away from civilization of any sort. Of course, the same rule applies to Fireweed, which makes a beautiful deep pink-purple jelly with a taste that hints of rose petals, but Fireweed won’t be ready to pick until July.

To make jellies from edible flowers, simply remove the petals only, add to a pot with 3-4 times as much water as petals, bring to a boil, remove from heat, and cover. I let it sit overnight before straining the liquid through a cheesecloth. The liquid tea can be stored in the refrigerator for up to one week or in the freezer for six months until you are ready to use it! I usually store it until I have enough to make a large batch of jelly at once, saving time and propane.

My Livingstone Daisies

I also always order a package of Alaska Wild Garden Mix flower seeds because it’s fun to see what pops up in our planters on the deck - daisies, poppies, columbines, and more. Finally, as a daisy-lover, I always plant an abundance of showy, Livingstone Daisies in the planters alongside the stairwell from the river.

Getting the seeds planted is the easy part. After we haul several buckets of dirt and a couple of armfuls of seedling trays along with a trowel, garden gloves, and fertilizer up from the stairs from the greenhouse to the cabin, I cover the kitchen table, to which we have added the extra leaf, with parchment paper and I’m ready to begin. Once the seeds are planted, one tray at a time, they get watered with a whiskey bottle because the inner cap enables the perfect amount of dribble to water the seeds without moving them. Meanwhile, Gregg has installed our seedling shelf above the couch. I plant and plant and plant until the shelf, the window sill, and half of the dining table are covered. That’s it, and I have to stop for now! Planting seeds the last week of March means that they will be ready to transfer to the greenhouse by the time they need to be repotted the first of May.

Inside the greenhouse

When May rolls around, my next project is to head down to the greenhouse to heavily soak all of the soil in my pots down there. The dirt is extremely dry from sitting out all winter and needs a couple of days of loving care before my little seedlings can be transplanted into them. We’ll be past hard freezes, and the days will be amazingly long, at least 16 hours of daylight. I believe we will be gaining an hour of sunlight every week by then.

Remember, living offgrid, all of the water for these plants has to be hauled up from the river to our greenhouse and cabin. However, now that the river is breaking up, we can again use our portable, electric water pump, and no longer have to haul it up 40-some steps in 5-gallon buckets weighing 40 pounds a piece. It’s surprising how two garden hoses, a 100-foot length of extension cord, and a small, $100 pump can feel like such a luxury. With this, we are able to fill a 30-gallon trash can just steps from our front door.

One day's harvest last year

I’m counting on these veggies and herbs to not only provide us with a year’s worth of food, but also to give me a little extra to sell at Saturday Markets – I already have people asking about them. Perhaps I’ll just hang a sign out down by the river and have folks stop by here to get the produce fresh out of the greenhouse to take with them to their fish camps! That’ll be a first out here, for sure!