Day: April 24, 2026

A Southeast Alaska garden does its best work when it is designed as a set of connected systems rather than a single plot of vegetables. Our climate — cool, wet, and long on daylight — is generous in some ways and challenging in others.  A healthy garden here tends to be one that works with those conditions instead of fighting them. The Victory Garden plan is built around four interconnected pieces: a water feature that doubles as pest control, a pollinator strategy centered on native flora, active soil stewardship, and a long-term investment in perennial, shelf-stable food.

Pollinators: native flora for yields and pest control 

Southeast Alaska’s wild pollinators — bumblebees, native solitary bees, hoverflies, and several moth and butterfly species — already do most of the pollinating work in our gardens. Inviting more of them produces two payoffs: better yields on crops that depend on pollination (squash, beans, berries, tree fruit) and better pest control, because many pollinator-friendly flowers also attract predatory and parasitic insects that eat aphids, caterpillars, and other garden pests.

Rather than relying only on imported ornamentals, we are building pollinator support around native and near-native flora that already thrives here. Adjacent fireweed, lupine and cow parsnip attract bumblebees and long-tongued bees, as do our seeded annual flowers like nasturtium and calendula.

Garden herbs allowed to flower, like chives, oregano, thyme, and cilantro benefit pollinators and beneficial predators throughout the season.

Pollinators need water as well as food, but in Southeast we must hydrate them without adding to the mosquito population. This year we are using bee cups which are small, shallow ceramic or glass dishes tucked among flowers offering safe drinking surfaces that are too shallow for mosquitoes to complete a breeding cycle, even when refilled every day or two.

Soil health: testing, rotation, and managing club root 

Soil is where most of Southeast Alaska’s gardening challenges begin and end. Our native soils are typically acidic, often low in available nutrients due to high rainfall leaching and sometimes compacted or poorly drained. Formal soil tests are a must and tell us pH and the levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and key minerals so we can amend specifically rather than broadly.

One issue we encountered last year is club root, a soil-borne pathogen that attacks the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, turnips, radishes, kohlrabi) and thrives in exactly the conditions we have plenty of: cool, wet, acidic soils. Club-root spores can persist in soil for up to 20 years, and replanting brassicas into infected ground simply feeds the problem.

Our strategy this season is disciplined rotation. The main bed will be planted primarily with non-brassica crops — roots, alliums, legumes, greens, and solanaceae (nightshades) under protection — with an isolated section given over to brassicas. Over time, additional tactics will support the rotation:

• Raising soil pH toward neutral with lime, which suppresses club root activity.

• Improving drainage with compost, raised beds, and cover crops to keep roots from sitting in saturated soil.

• Sanitation — cleaning tools between beds and avoiding moving soil from infected areas into clean ones.

Long-term food stability 

Annual vegetables feed us for a season; perennials and shelf-stable crops feed us for years. A major focus of the Victory Garden’s plan is building that longer time horizon into the landscape.

We are investing effort in annual crops that store for months without a freezer or canner. Root crops like potatoes, carrots, beets, onions can all be stored in a root cellar and can last until it’s time to start seeds the following spring. Winter squash varieties like kuri, hubbard and long pie pumpkins can mature in a hoop house or in a field in a very warm, sheltered spot. Once cured, they store for months on a pantry shelf without any processing.

Water and the swale

In Southeast Alaska, rain is rarely the problem — managing where it goes is. A well-placed swale (a shallow contour channel that slows and spreads runoff) turns abundant rainfall into an asset. It captures water high in the garden, lets it soak in gradually, and supplies moisture through the occasional summer dry stretches when our usually damp soils can surprise us by drying out. Beyond irrigation, the swale is a habitat feature. A little standing or slow-moving water pulls in the organisms that handle pest control for us. Toads are perhaps the single most effective slug predator we can invite in besides ducks. One boreal or western toad can eat hundreds of slugs in a season, and they need moist, sheltered places to breed and rest.

Systems that support each other 

What ties these strategies together is that each one quietly solves more than one problem. The swale is irrigation and pest control. Native flora is pollination and beneficial insect habitat. Bee cups hydrate pollinators while avoiding mosquito risk. Soil testing and rotation protect crops and guard the soil for the next decade.

A Southeast Alaska garden, designed this way, starts to look less like a patch of vegetables and more like a small, deliberate ecosystem — one that uses our rain, our light, and our native life to keep producing, season after season.

The post A whole-garden approach for the Victory Garden appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Succession planting usually refers to a vegetable gardening technique used to maximize yield and ensure a continuous harvest throughout the season by reseeding or planting crops in sequence.

This rewarding gardening practice can also be applied to herbaceous perennial flower and shade gardens. 

Herbaceous refers to plants that lack a woody stem and die back after flowering. This includes many flowers and ferns, but not shrubs or trees. Perennial means plants that live longer than one season.

In gardening, perennials typically refer to herbaceous plants that emerge in spring, grow, develop a flower, die back in the winter, and commonly re-emerge the following spring to begin the same cycle. 

Great, right? Plant once and get flowers year after year after year? Well, there is a caveat to that.

Annual flowers bloom continuously all-season before completing their life cycle and cannot be reused after one season (commonly the ones we see in hanging baskets, planters, and windowsill boxes). Perennials go through an entire growth and reproduction cycle in one gardening season. As a result, their bloom time is often limited, averaging two to six weeks, depending on the variety and location.

If you plant your flower bed with beautiful tulips, lupines and arctic iris, you will have a bare space by the end of July. 

The solution is simple — don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, mix multiple varieties with staggered flowering times to enjoy a full season of color and gain an entire season of pollinators.

For example, once your beautiful globeflowers fade, allium varieties are coming on, followed by aconitum (also known as monkshood), and eventually rudbeckia will decorate your flower bed until the first frost.

Here is a little cheat sheet I created to help guide your planning. Undoubtedly, I forgot a flower type or two.

Keep in mind we all have unique microclimates in our gardens; therefore, some varieties may vary in bloom times in your garden beds. So, use this as a flexible guide — cut it out, scribble on it, stick it to the fridge, bring it with you to a plant sale, or simply use it now to dream about all the fun flowers yet to come this season.

Lastly, the easiest way to extend our gardening season is with a little effort in October. Plant fall bulbs into the ground for lush colors the following spring. Crocus and scilla often peek through the melting snow just when our eyes need some inspiration after too much white.

Happy gardening!

The post How to keep the garden blooming all season – succession planting with flowers appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

On garden planning

I wish I learned years ago when starting a garden to make your beds a uniform size, so you can use the same row covers, trellis, hoops, or whatever additions to your beds. It is so much easier when they’re all the same size. 

In our climate, it is advantageous to grow on upright trellises. Because we have so many problems with mold and rot after August, anything lying on the ground or crowded is prone to mold. 

Growing them up on a trellis helps with this problem. My favorite trellis is the 6-inch, square fencing panels some people call hog wire. This works for pole beans, cucumbers, peas and nasturtiums . I’ve even seen some varieties of squash growing vertically. Old fishing nets work for trellising, but it moves more than I like. 

Seed starting & early plant care

Many of you have seedlings growing now. Make sure they stay watered, but don’t pamper them too much. Tougher seedlings make stronger plants. Use a gentle blowing fan on them for a few hours each day to strengthen their stems. If you have the option, growing them in cooler temperatures will make transplant shock less. Many seeds need warmth to sprout, but they like growing in cooler temperatures. 

I have recently started planting my onion transplants into small soil blocks or into small plastic cells. Put the transplants or sets into dirt, and get those roots starting to grow. After three weeks or so, you can put them outside and they will already have their roots established and will start growing immediately, giving them a longer growing season to produce a bigger bulb of onion.  The more onion leaves you have, the bigger your onion will grow. 

Transplanting & self-seeding strategies

Several plants will come from each beet seed you plant. With enough room, those beets will grow beautifully left  in a clump close to each other. 

However, if you like a neat orderly garden with rows, you can transplant those little baby plants growing very close to each other into whatever place you want them. 

Don’t try this with carrots, as they do not transplant well. 

If you are a self-identified lazy gardener, you may want to use plants that like to self-seed. Many, especially flowers, include calendula, alyssum, pansies, yarrows, kale and arugula, too. 

Let the seeds fall on the soil in the fall season. Once the baby plant is growing in the spring, you can dig it out and transplant to where you want it to grow. For some this is easier than starting the plants inside. 

Crop specific growing tips

Brussels sprouts

Do your Brussels sprouts only produce leaves and not sprouts? Try starting them earlier, like in early March, before your other brassicas. Brussels sprouts need a longer growing season than other brassicas such as broccoli and cauliflower. 

Fava Beans

I am learning that fava beans are one of the most reliable beans you can grow here. They tolerate our cold climate very well. If you have not tried eating fresh fava beans, I suggest you do. I have found planting them in my 4-foot wide beds intensely 3-4 inches apart in rows 10-12 inches apart works well. However, they need support, or they will fall over once they get 4-5 feet tall. 

After planting, place a panel of the 6-by-6” hardware wire horizontally over the bed on stakes about 2 feet above the surface. Make it solidly stable with stakes/posts. The fava beans will grow through this fencing, which will give the plants the support they need. The beans are ready when the pods start to show the shape of beans inside by looking lumpy. They freeze beautifully. 

Spinach

If you have problems growing spinach here, don’t be discouraged. In 30 years, I have only once been successful growing a good spinach crop any time other than April and May. This plant responds to the light we have here. It seems that we should be able to get a fall crop when our light wanes again, but in my garden, I can’t seem to make that happen. Keep trying in those early-season months because spinach likes coolness.

Zucchini

My greenhouse space is prime real estate, so I grow my zucchinis outside and have almost always had great success with them when I cover the ground with clear plastic. This seems to give roots enough heat to be consistently successful. Now, if we have a lot of rain or windy conditions when the pollinators are out, you may get pointy-looking squash because of poor pollination. A solution to this problem is to help them pollinate by rubbing the pollen from the male flower onto the female flowers every few days. 

Happy gardening! Remember, you can put extra produce you have this summer into the freezer to save money and eat year-round from your garden. 

The post Some of my favorite tips and tricks from 30 years of gardening in the Chilkat Valley appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

In my experience, there are no secrets when it comes to growing food in Alaska. Whether growing at home or growing to make a living, the transparency, support, and cheerleading among agriculturalists in this state is outstanding and truly unique. While we are a new project, the contributors of Henderson Community Farm have decades of experience they are eager to share.

To pay that forward, here are some of our favorite tools and resources that are easy on the wallet and body:

Broadfork:

If you haven’t seen one before, a broadfork is like a double-wide hard-tined fork. It has two handles and requires much less stooping. We use broadforks to break up compacted soil, aerate it, and to harvest root crops like potatoes and carrots. Our forks were handmade in Fairbanks, but Treadlite has been recommended as extremely durable with cheap shipping.

Stirrup hoe:

Another back saver! The stirrup hoe is long-handled with a hinged scraper (looks like a stirrup) on the bottom, used for shallow weeding. They are typically four to six-inches wide and used to scrape the surface of the soil in between rows without bending over. Try this on a sunny day and watch those weeds wilt!

Flame weeder:

Available at the hardware store, the flame weeder attaches to a small propane tank to torch weeds, weed seeds, and even slugs. This can bring out the wild pyro in all of us, so please use responsibly and contact the Haines Volunteer Fire Department for a burn permit and best practices.

Soil blocker:

We start most of our plants indoors and transplant once the outdoor soil temperature warms. Instead of planting in those flimsy plastic cups, we use soil blockers. By filling the press tightly with soil, they create firm cubes, perfect for planting. Soil blocks prevent seedlings from becoming root bound, reduce transplant stress, and take up less space. Soil blockers come in many sizes and have stand-up models.

Biochar:

Those black, porous chunks of unburned firewood in your stove may be the cheapest gift to give your garden or compost. Charcoal has an extraordinary amount of surface area, creating a sort of high-density apartment building for beneficial microorganisms. The “bio” part comes from “charging” the charcoal with a living substance like compost, kombucha or kimchi juice. Once crushed up to rice-sized pieces, charged biochar can be directly added to your garden bed. Kelpie Wilson is the true expert and can convert any skeptic.

Korean Natural Farming:

Korean Natural Farming leans heavily on fermentation and cultivating “indigenous microorganisms” to give your soil exactly what it needs. Dr. Cho’s Global Natural Farming is a great recipe book for homemade soil amendments and is available free online. Many of his ingredients are endemic to tropical climates, but innovators have been successful subbing in wild locals such as nettles, comfrey and seaweed. 

Ditches and swales:

A lot of water moves through the Henderson field. In some zones, we embrace the wet by planting things that can handle soggy feet. In others, we dug ditches to divert water and swales to hold it. A swale is a wide, shallow depression that holds water and also slows its descent when situated on a hill. If located above crops, this can create an auto-irrigating system, keeping downhill soil moister while water in the swale seeps out.

Community:

Do you really want to save your back? Share the load. More than any tool in our shed, community support is our greatest resource. Our small team couldn’t manage these thousands of plants without volunteers. Team up with friends at your home garden and see how much easier (and more fun!) the work can be. Plant a little extra and surprise your garden-less neighbor – that feels pretty good too. Try a Victory Garden or Henderson Community Farm work party. Get a plot at the community garden at the fairgrounds. Sharing the bounty makes everyone wealthy.

The post Our Favorite Tools and Resources at Henderson Community Farm appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.