Garden Tips For Dealing With The Interior Alaska Climate

Gardening in the interior of Alaska is a lot like living in the interior of Alaska.

It requires preparation, a mind for survival and attention to a lot of details.  Challenging.  But, not impossible for the right kind of people.

Fortunately, our growing season and summer temperatures in the Interior of Alaska are more than enough to grow most types plants.  While it doesn’t usually get exceptionally hot, the interior does get a fair bit of warmth, sun and otherwise great gardening weather.

You won’t be growing pineapples here, but even some warm climate varieties of peppers and tomatoes will do well here!

This post includes some of our top tips and tricks for gardening in our subarctic environment!

Figuring Out When To Plant Your Garden In Alaska

Some plants are rather frost tolerant and can be planted quite early in the season.

We think of planting our garden in phases, based entirely around general temperature tolerance.

In mid-May, or two weeks before last frost, you can start thinking about planting most root based plants.  These will be things such as potatoes, radishes, turnips and other cold tolerant root vegetables.

Also around this time, you can consider transplanting many cold tolerant veggies, such as kale, collards, Brussels sprouts and broccoli and a few other varieties that will deal well with the cold.  Our seed schedule list identifies all the cold hardy plants that are eligible for this.

For the majority of your garden, though, definitely wait until dangers of last frost have cleared.  This will typically be around the last frost date, sometimes earlier and sometimes later.

Pay attention to the weather and once evening temperatures are steadily above 45 degrees, that’s when it’s usually safe to plant your garden.  It’s still possible to get late frosts, so be careful!

Warm climate and frost sensitive plants, such as tomatoes and peppers, are often best treated with a little more patience.  Tomatoes can often go outside after the danger of frost has cleared, but low temperatures are still in the mid 40’s.  Peppers, however, should be kept inside overnight until evening temperatures are at least 50 degrees.

The point at which you head out to plant is a very careful and calculated decision.

Again, last frost could be anywhere from the second week of May to June 1st, or even after that!  We are eyeballing the 10 day weather forecasts and evening temperature predictions to see if we can get into our garden season early.

If you really want to play it safe, take the last frost date as your planting date.  Some even wait 5-10 days longer.  This is usually a no-risk time frame, but you should still be keeping an eye on the weather.

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Learn How To Force Your Garden To Maturity

Many plants can be “forced” into maturity.  Using these techniques will significantly benefit your harvest,.

Physical Plant Manipulation

For example, with Brussels sprouts, it is imperative to top the plant about a month before your first frost.  In the Interior of Alaska, this is around August 1st, but it can be any time around there.

Doing this will promote early sprout growth, offering the plant a good month and a half to develop its sprouts.  Most Brussels sprouts are considerably long-season.  We just don’t have that kind of time!

Similarly, you’ll want to top indeterminate tomatoes around the same time.  It’s also beneficial to trim away much of the foliage, we usually aim for at the least the lower half of the tomato plant.

This will force these plants to produce your desired product.  Ripe tomatoes!

Be The Bee, Pollinate Your Plants

You can also help plants along that need pollinators to be productive.

For tomatoes, peppers and most nightshade plants, this is really easy.  Simply tickle the flowers with your fingers, every day or two.  This process will virtually guarantee a pepper or tomato will grow.  You don’t have to wait around for the bee to show up!

Other flowering plants, such as cucumbers and squash, are a little more difficult to pollinate by hand.  These plants feature male and female flowers. As you might imagine, the male flower has to pollinate the female flower.

This can be done by hand to help your plants along.  You have to gently touch the male’s stamen to the female flower, typically several times.

Alternatively, you can purchase parthenocarpic varieties that do not require pollination.

Always remember, the frost is coming and your plants don’t know it.  Help them along with a few drastic measures!

Use Parthenocarpic Seed Varieties

This topic somehow alluded us as gardeners for a long time.

Without getting into the complexities of plant reproduction, many plants feature separate male and female flowers.  Effectively, these are the plant’s reproduction organs.  In botanical terms, these varieties are called monecious varieties.

These varieties require pollen to transfer from the male to female flowers in order to set fruit.  This is typically performed by pollinators such as bees and flies.

With some plants, there are certain genetics that you can buy called parthenocarpic varieties.  These varieties are similar to the monecious, however, are self pollinating.

These plant genetics significantly increase the likelihood of the plant fruiting.  They can also be helpful in greenhouse and hoophouse scenarios where it might be less likely to receive pollinator visitors.

Parthenocarpic genetics have been most pursued in cucumbers, but is also seen in some varieties of summer squash.  Both of these are commonly moneacious plants.

We have heard there are pathenocarpic winter squash, but to date, have been unable to track down any seed suppliers or reliable sources.

Harvest Your Cold Climate Garden In Phases

First frost is a flexible time, mainly because there isn’t imminent risk of extremely cold temperatures just yet.  The immediate danger is frost, which will kill almost all plants that are frost sensitive.

We take advantage of this flexibility and harvest our garden in multiple phases.  We prioritize our harvest based on hardiness.

Our general harvesting strategy looks something like this:

On Or Before First Frost:

• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Peppers
• Any other “warm loving” plants

Around Last Frost:

• All Herbs
• Squash (Plant will die, but fruit will tolerate a light frost)
• Onions & Other Allium
• Radish & other root veggies
• Any other “frost sensitive” plants

The Last Things & Up Until Hard Frost:

• All cold hardy plants (Kale, collards, brussels sprouts, broccoli, etc.)
• Carrots

Though there is some flexibility, it’s always important to remember that the subarctic winter is both imminent and inevitable at the end of the season.

The first thing we harvest is always our warm weather vegetables.  We’ll usually harvest tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplants and any other warm climate plants just before first frost.  These are the most vulnerable of plants we grow.

From there, we like to get our squash harvested.  These plants are also not frost tolerant.  The first frost will kill the plant, but it won’t destroy your harvest.  That said, you need to try and harvest these things just before the first frost or immediately after the first frost.

Some things can be left well into the first few frosts.  Most root vegetables are quite frost tolerant.  As are kales and most brassicas.  Carrots will even improve their flavor if left to experience a few frosts.

The important thing is to get all the garden harvest and chores done before the real cold moves in!

If some of your frost sensitive plants needs a bit of extra time, you can often times throw some frost (or remay) cloth over them and get another week or two of growing time.  This is great when you’re really trying to push our season to the edge.  It is especially helpful for things like squash that often need just a bit more time.

Just keep in mind that the shoulder season is not the most optimal for growing.  Miracles are unlikely to happen.  If something looks like it won’t finish, it probably won’t in the extra few weeks of fall.  That’s OK and what next year is for.