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Basic Cold Climate Gardening Information
Everyone has to start somewhere! Let’s start with the basics of cold climate gardening!
Whether you’re an experienced grower or new to the field, if subarctic growing is new to you, let’s discuss the important things to focus on!
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 & the far north.
These are the three core gardening techniques that we use in our subarctic gardens!
Let’s explore some of the best vegetables to grow in the northern garden!
In this article, we explore the importance of increasing ambient air temperatures against soil temperatures. What should you pursue?
What is cold hardy? What’s a warm loving plant? This is everything you need to know about plants and temperature tolerance. One of our most important skills!
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.
In this post, we explore the ideas around self sustenance. Can you really grow all your own food?
Cold climate gardening can take a bit more preparation. If you’re moving from novice to advanced, these are topics worth more study!
Organic gardening isn’t all its cracked up to be in the subarctic. Learn why we no longer practice organic gardening.
An overview of how we integrate intensive gardening techniques into our growing methods. Maximize your use of space using modified square foot gardening!
The most comprehensive list of gardening related resources for Fairbanks & the general Interior of Alaska. Find community gardens, books, clubs, greenhouses and more!
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 a mere 28 square feet!
How important is it to follow the instructions on a seed packet? Let’s talk about what’s important and what is not!
Is growing a garden from seed really cheaper than buying plants? We tracked our costs over several seasons to find out!
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!
All plants need water. We share our best methods for keeping hundreds of seedlings and growing garden starts well hydrated.
We explore variety selection and which plants require special care when grow in in subarctic gardens!
Northern growers sometimes have to practice cold stratification to get certain varieties of seed to germinate well. What’s that all about?
Understanding seed viability and how to best store seeds is an important topic for any seed grower.
Having troubles with seed germination? Here’s our take on the most common problems with vegetable seed germination.
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!
The topic of plant nutrition & fertilizer is mysterious. Let’s break it all down & get some clarity on your choices!
We explored soil pH control in our container based gardens. Let’s discuss why and how we did it! A fascinating and productive topic!
With decades of container gardening experience, let’s discuss some of the more advanced concepts that we’ve learned!
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.
This is our practices and thoughts on re-using container garden soil. We’ve been re-using ours for many, many years!
Learn how we practice permaculture and create hundreds of gallons of compost by using hot & cold composting techniques, entirely from our 2 acre lot!
Our build guide on how we built our raised bed garden. Protect your garden from common subarctic threats with defensive design!
This is how we built a sizeable raised bed garden with inexpensive landscape timbers!
Ever notice that some plants start flowering almost immediately after transplanting into your garden? This is why!
Winterizing your irrigation systems is an important step in cold climates. This is the equipment we use and how we do it!
Plant Specific 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 & tricks 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 crop, 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 how to grow this elusive plant in your subarctic garden!
Onions are more challenging than most people think. Everything you need to know about growing onions successfully in the subarctic!
This is our complete, full cycle guide for growing potatoes. Our only perpetual crop, it has become one of our favorite plants to grow.
Cilantro and coriander production can be a bit nuanced, particularly when grown in the extreme north.
Home grown celery is absolutely fantastic! Learn what it takes to grow your own in cold climates!
We do a lot of garden variety trials to find what works & what doesn’t. 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. This is how we do it!
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 & Grow Rooms
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!
If you want to know more about designing and building an indoor grow room, here’s what you need to consider!
There are a lot of options when it comes to indoor garden lighting. This post covers some of the basic technologies & decisions.
How we built our own high power DIY LED lighting. They produce amazing garden starts and also allow for full cycle indoor growth.
We built a “smart” indoor grow room using home automation and smart technology. This is how we did it!
Greenhouses & Temperature Control
When you want to grow 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!
How we built a small, DIY seedling greenhouse. Get your plants outside, early in the season, without breaking the bank!
These are our thoughts on season extension techniques and practices that the northern gardener needs to be familiar with! How we get a 160+ day growing season with only 110 growing days!
We sealed our subarctic greenhouse with UV rated plastic to improve performance. Dramatically improves greenhouse results!
The best, dumbest idea we’ve had in a long time! Increase ambient air temperatures cheap & grow better warm weather crops!
Harvesting & Food Preservation
The point of having a garden is to harvest all the goodies! Learn our take on harvesting and food preservation!
We discuss our uses of various food preservation techniques. Learn what techniques we use, why we use them and find deep-dive info on how to learn more!
This article is on the subject of our most frequently used garden preservation technique. It’s fast, food safe and keeps us in great supply of our garden veggies all year long!
Learn how we harvest our herbs and prepare them for long term 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, a supposedly impossible feat!
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.