Basic Subarctic Gardening Information
Everyone has to start somewhere! Let’s start with some of the basics of subarctic gardening!
This is a dense, bulleted “download” of all the most very basic and important things about gardening, cold climate gardening and growing plants that we could come up with!
More tips on dealing with a short growing season, like we find in the Interior of Alaska.
These are the three core gardening techniques that we use in our subarctic gardens!
What is cold hardy? What’s a warm loving plant? This is everything you need to know about plants and temperature tolerance. It is very helpful to understand plant tolerance in subarctic gardening!
How we go about garden planning for family-scale food production, which allows us to know what and how much of it we need to grow every year.
Cold climate gardening can take a bit more preparation and thought, especially in the shoulder seasons where the potential for frost is real.
Organic gardening isn’t all its cracked up to be in the subarctic. Learn why we no longer practice organic gardening.
Growing Your Subarctic Garden From Seed
Are you interested in growing your own garden starts from seed? Learn about how we do it in one of the harshest climates on earth!
If you are interested in growing your garden from seed indoors, be sure to read this overview of the seed starting process!
Inside our seed germination techniques and how we grow hundreds of garden starts in 24 square feet!
If you don’t do this, your plants WILL die. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. We share our timing, techniques and precise hardening off schedule!
We discuss some of the considerations for what you should plant in your subarctic garden!
- What you should be planting in March
- What you should be planting in April
- What you should be planting in May
All plants need water. We share our best methods for keeping hundreds of seedlings and growing garden starts well hydrated.
Learn about cold climate specific seeds and why they matter!
Understanding seed viability and how to best store seeds is an important topic for any seed grower.
Subarctic Gardening Techniques
Let’s discuss some of the core gardening techniques that we use in our subarctic vegetable gardens!
When you understand the basics of plant tolerance, the next step is learning how to really push the limits in growing your own subarctic garden starts!
A container garden can allow the new gardener to grow anything, anywhere without having to put a lot of effort into garden infrastructure.
Raised rows are one of the most effective subarctic gardening techniques that you can use when growing in the subarctic ground!
Using sub-irrigated containers is one of the most effective container gardening techniques you can use in the subarctic!
How we centrally irrigated our off-grid container garden, effectively creating an entire container garden on autopilot!
Using mulch in your garden is a very effective technique to retain heat and moisture, vital in the subarctic!
We make a lot of our own soil, read about the various techniques you can use to make a lot of soil economically.
Learn how we practice permaculture and create hundreds of gallons of compost by using hot & cold composting techniques on our 2 acre lot!
This is how we built a sizeable raised bed garden with inexpensive landscape timbers! We use this for subarctic perennials and our annual cut flower garden.
Subarctic Growing Guides
We have a goal of creating the world’s first subarctic plant growing database. These are the beginnings of that project.
Our top tips & tracks for growing great tomatoes in cold climates & the subarctic!
Our tips & tricks for growing hot, super hot & sweet peppers in the extreme north!
Brussels Sprouts are a great cool climate vegetable, but take some “finesse” to grow in the subarctic.
While squash are a warm climate food, they can be grown well in the subarctic. These are our top tips & tricks!
The subarctic lends itself really well to growing artichokes over the summer. Learn the important tricks to grow this elusive plant in your subarctic garden!
Onions are more challenging than most might think. Everything you need to know about growing onions successfully in the subarctic!
We do a lot of garden variety trials to find what works & what doesn’t. When possible, we try to document the results.
Foraging & Food Forests
In these posts, we explore some of the ways in which we “live off the land” and perpetually produce food in the subarctic.
Many years, we process birch sap from birch trees on our property to make DIY birch syrup.
Learn how we have established our subarctic “food forest” on our property, setting us up for long term food production right in our backyard.
Indoor Garden Lighting
Growing great garden starts requires indoor lighting to be successful. Learn from our mistakes and learn why we use the industry’s most advanced lighting to grow our garden vegetables!
There are a lot of options when it comes to indoor garden lighting. This post covers some of the basic technologies & decisions.
LED are the most electrically efficient grow lights you can have. We built our own DIY chip-on-board LED lights for our indoor lighting. They produce amazing garden starts and also allow for full cycle indoor growth.
Greenhouses & Temperature Control
When you want to do warm climate crops in the subarctic, the greenhouse is one of the best techniques you can use to increase your harvest!
How we built our own fully automated and almost hands free greenhouse!
How we use cheap greenhouses to get our plants outside, well before our last frost!
We sealed our subarctic greenhouse with UV rated plastic to improve performance. This opens up options to shoulder season heating and dramatically improves greenhouse results!
It’s All About The Harvest
The point of having a garden is to harvest all the goodies! Learn our take on harvesting and food preservation!
Common Subarctic Gardening Problems
One of the best things about subarctic gardening is an overall lack of major gardening pests and problems. That said, we are not immune.
We have experienced the tribulation of the onion fly. We developed a successful technique for disrupting their lifecycle in an active allium garden. This is what we had to do!
Having troubles with seed germination? Here’s our take on the most common problems with vegetable seed germination.
We discuss the most common threats to subarctic gardens and how to deal with them.
Voles are one of the greatest subarctic garden threats. We discuss the methods and techniques we use to reduce the impact voles have on our gardens.