Basic Gardening Information
Everyone has to start somewhere! Let’s start with some of the basics of subarctic gardening!
These are our top tips and tricks for new cold climate gardeners!- Garden tips for dealing with Interior of Alaska climate!
- These are the three core gardening techniques that we use in our subarctic gardens
- Confused by “cold climate” and “warm climate” crops? This is everything you need to know about it and it is very helpful to understand plant tolerance in subarctic gardening!
- How to plan out a garden and figure out what you want to grow and how much you need to plant.
- Here are 10 cold weather gardening tips!
- Organic gardening isn’t all its cracked up to be in the subarctic. Learn why we no longer practice organic gardening.
- Don’t create more work for yourself. The chop and drop technique saves you time and creates several benefits.
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!
Before getting carried away, be sure to read this overview of the process!- Inside our seed germination techniques and how we grow hundreds of garden starts in 24 square feet!
- What should you plant in your garden, anyway?
- Here is Frosty Garden’s seed starting schedule
- Having troubles? Here’s our take on the most common problems with vegetable seed germination.
- Month-By-Month Planting Schedules:
- What you should be planting in March
- What you should be planting in April
- What you should be planting in May
- The must have tool for watering your own garden starts
- 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!
- Learn how we built our raised beds to be rabbit-proof, vole-proof and “moose proof” without building an electric fence!
- Using sub-irrigated containers is one of the most effective container gardening techniques you can use in the subarctic!
- 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!
Plant Specifics In The Subarctic
We have a goal of creating the world’s first subarctic plant growing database. These are the beginnings of that project.
- Growing tomatoes in cold climates & the subarctic
- Growing peppers in cold climates & the subarctic
- We perform subarctic garden trials almost every year and try to document the results.
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.
- Techniques for dealing with voles when using in-ground gardens.
- Build the cheapest, easiest and most effective vole trap on the planet!
- Battling root maggots and preventing their re-emergence
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.- We built a DIY chip-on-board LED lights for our indoor lighting. They produce amazing garden starts and also allow for full cycle growth.
- Three years later, we still absolutely love our DIY chip-on-board LED’s for indoor growing
- In 2020, we started using quantum board LED’s and have had some great success!
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.- Small, inexpensive greenhouse temperature control.
- Is a greenhouse worth it when growing in the subarctic?
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!
- Learn how we harvest our herbs and prepare them for long term preservation
- One of our favorite ways of preserving our harvest! Shelf stable, ready to go meals are always the first to go!
- Making liqueurs from fruit harvests is a fun way to use up good quantities of fruit from your garden!
- Pressure canning basics. Why you need to get over your fears and just start doing it!
Foraging & Food Forests
In these posts, we explore some of the ways in which we “live of the land” and perpetually produce food in the subarctic.
- Many years, we process birch sap from 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.
- Getting into Alaskan cryptograms (mushroom identification & harvesting)
- We often practice wild berry picking, particularly the bountiful blueberry harvest available within Interior Alaska.
In 2020, we decided to re-architect the vision of FrostyGarden.com.
We have started the process of migrating our site to static content, this page is subject to that process! Something you will learn about us – we test our code in production. We aren’t some ad agency with a team of writers, a budget and a timeline!
We will remove this notice when we feel the content is completed, but our goal is to continually update our information in the future!
Thanks for bearing with us!