Brand New Subarctic Gardener? Start Here!

Whether you’re a brand new gardener or an experienced one, growing in the subarctic is a bit different than it is at lower latitudes!

We started this site because of those differences.  Even we, as practiced cold climate growers, hit some walls when it came to picking up gardening at subarctic latitudes!

We’ve now spent many years talking about and documenting the differences and challenges, hoping to help short cut your learning curve!

This article is intended to be a sort of introduction to the various concepts and techniques we’ve found helpful over the years!

The Three Most Important Concepts

If we had to boil things down, there’s probably three important things to keep in mind when it comes to subarctic gardening.

• Subarctic climates are not sure-fire like many warmer places.  Some plants just don’t like our climate and won’t perform well.
• Sometimes various techniques or equipment can be beneficial.  These are typically aimed at increasing soil temperatures and sometimes ambient air temperatures.
• The organic process is very slow at northern latitudes, often requiring additional attention to be paid to nutritional aspects of your plants.

To the first point, we often use a term to describe the performance of certain plants.  That word is marginal, meaning it’s close to the lowest limit of “acceptable.”

It’s not that you can’t get eggplant, okra or other warm loving vegetables to grow at high latitudes.  They will technically grow, but the desired output (typically, a crop) is either non-existent or extremely poor.

To the second point, the idea of simply tilling up a bit of land and planting seeds or transplants in subarctic soils is not the sure-fire technique like it is at lower latitudes.

The cooler soils we experience can make it very advantageous to raise the soil, either through raised rows, raised beds or growing in containers.  These processes allow the sun to warm the soil more quickly, resulting in objectively better production.

And to the third point, plant nutrition is challenging at northern latitudes.  We often have to go well beyond simple compost additions to our soil, using fertilizers to give our plants what they need to grow.

The Impact Of 24 Hours Of Daylight

One of the things some growers wonder is how plants will respond to the radical differences in daylight compared to lower latitudes.

We do discuss this much more extensively.  However, it’s really not a major thing you need to concern yourself with.

The overwhelming majority of plants that you might want to grow will not be adversely affected by the increased daylight.

If anything, the super long days are a benefit to us.  The additional photosynthesis your plants will experience often translates to larger plants and better growth!

That said, there are some plants that are sensitive to photoperiodism.  We’ve spent time documenting those plants and discussing techniques you can use to increase your harvest!

A Greenhouse Is Not A Requirement!

We’ve encountered a number of newer subarctic gardeners that have a misunderstood belief that far northern gardening isn’t possible without a greenhouse.

For some, it’s kept them from moving forward with a garden!

While a greenhouse is very helpful for certain things at subarctic latitudes, it is not a pre-requisite to get started!

Many, many plants are tolerant of our cooler northern climate and will do great without a greenhouse.  In fact, we often say that we’ve spent much of our time kicking plants out of our greenhouse!

If you’re thinking you “need” one for growing plants from seed, that’s another one of those “differences” we see at subarctic latitudes.

The reality is, the time that we need to be raising our plants, we’re still seeing temperatures well into the negative digits.  It’s impractical to heat greenhouses against these temperatures at the “home scale.”

Subarctic growers typically raise their plants from seed indoors or use a technique called winter sowing.  If you’re not thinking about growing from seed, many local nurseries can get you set up for anything you might want!

The Northern Organic Experience

We’ve spent a lot of time studying the organic process at extreme northern latitudes.

It’s the same process that you might know and trust, but it’s exceptionally slow at extreme northern latitude!

The life forms responsible for breaking down organics into usable nutrition are greatly impacted by our colder temperatures.  Effectively, they take a nap for nearly half the year!

For that reason, we often have to rely on external sources of nutrition (be it organic or inorganic sources) in order to get our plants to thrive.

This was one of the things that really took us by surprise.  We’d always been strong proponents of organic principles.  We’ve heavily had to modify those principles in our subarctic gardening practice!