Category: Alaska News

Alaskans take care of each other. It’s part of what defines life here. People look out for their neighbors, step up in hard moments and take pride in contributing to something bigger than themselves.

That same spirit has long defined Alaska’s labor community. Unions helped build this state and continue to keep it running today, grounded in hard work, fairness and a shared commitment to the communities that make up the Last Frontier.

We know this firsthand as members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing federal workers, and as former public servants at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Veterans Affairs.

The work of the EPA and VA may look different day to day, but it is rooted in the same purpose: taking care of Alaskan communities. At the VA, that means providing care, support and dignity to those who served our country. At the EPA, it means protecting the fundamentals that keep people healthy, like clean air and safe drinking water, and ensuring an environment where Alaskans can thrive. Together, that is what care for Alaska looks like. 

But right now, decisions coming out of Washington are making it harder – and in some cases impossible – for Alaska’s federal workers to do their jobs. And it’s Alaskan communities who are paying the price. 

The workers being targeted aren’t faceless bureaucrats. They are your neighbors. They live and work in the communities they protect. They are the nurse helping a veteran manage chronic pain, the technician ensuring a rural water system is safe to drink from and the scientist monitoring pollution that could threaten our fish stocks. We’re speaking out on their behalf because many of them simply cannot, out of fear of discipline.

In Alaska, federal workers are especially essential. We have the highest percentage of veterans in the country, and our communities are deeply connected to the health of our land and water. When the federal workforce is dismantled, the consequences are immediate and severe. And we are already beginning to see what happens when they are weakened. 

The EPA has canceled roughly $280 million in grants that were funding water infrastructure, energy and resilience projects across Alaska. With funding gone, many of these projects that keep communities and the local economy healthy are now delayed or abandoned altogether. 

That doesn’t just put public health at risk. It also costs good jobs that Alaskan workers rely on. Local engineers, construction workers and skilled tradespeople — many of them union members — depend on this work to put food on the table. When funding disappears, so do job opportunities and the paychecks that come with them. 

At the same time, the VA in Alaska is facing staffing shortages and hiring freezes, with over 20% of staff lost during 2025. Fewer providers mean longer wait times, delayed care and gaps in services that veterans rely on.

Across both agencies, we are seeing a pattern: workforce cuts, funding reductions and political decisions that undermine the ability of public servants to do their jobs. As we’ve seen time and again, weakening this workforce is not just an attack on federal employees; it is a direct threat to Alaska’s public health and safety.

Alaskans expect and deserve better from our elected leaders. We expect our representatives in Washington to stand up for our state’s interests and reflect its values, and what it means to take care of one another — not just in words, but in action. 

But Senator Dan Sullivan and Congressman Nick Begich have instead stood on the sidelines as the funding we need is taken away, and the federal workforce we rely on is hollowed out. 

We have seen zero urgency to stand up for Alaska’s federal workforce who keep our water safe, care for our veterans and support our communities. The midterm elections are approaching and Alaska voters will have a chance to decide if we have leadership that actually cares.

This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about priorities. Our representatives should be leaders willing to stand up for the people who make Alaska work. Sen. Sullivan and Congressman Begich have failed to be leaders, and instead have chosen to stand by while critical services are hollowed out and communities are left behind.

Alaska deserves leadership that will not sit quietly while decisions in Washington put our communities at risk. It deserves leaders who understand that investing in federal workers is not optional, but essential.

Because in Alaska, taking care of each other isn’t a slogan. It’s a responsibility. And it’s one we all share.

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A governor’s nominee for the Alaska Police Standards Council who served on the board for eight months has resigned following legislative confirmation hearings. 

The resignation comes after legislative hearings where Veronica Lambertsen was questioned about her eligibility for a rural seat on the board and social media and defended conspiracy theories. 

A spokesperson for Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office confirmed Friday morning that Lambertsen had resigned from the council, but did not provide a reason for the resignation.

Lambertsen was nominated for a three-year term on the 13-member Alaska Police Standards Council, which oversees law enforcement standards statewide. She had begun her term on the council representing a public seat last August after her nomination, and was up for confirmation before the Legislature this session. 

Lambertsen did not respond to a request for comment on the reason for her resignation on Friday. 

In a confirmation hearing Wednesday, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee put questions to Lambertsen about social media posts going several years back, where she defended views related to a variety of conspiracy theories questioning the Holocaust, the Jan. 6 insurrection and others. 

Lawmakers also questioned her eligibility for the seat, one of two public seats reserved to represent rural communities with a population of 2,500 or less, and suggested Wednesday she was not eligible for the position. 

Lambertsen is the owner of a motel in Bird Creek, a small neighborhood in Turnagain Arm that is part of the municipality of Anchorage. 

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One of the nearly 20 candidates in the race for Alaska’s governorship is getting a significant boost from the state’s organized labor movement.

Four union officials are helping to lead a newly formed political group that will boost the candidacy of Republican Click Bishop, a former state senator from Fairbanks with a long background in the labor movement.

The group will have a six-figure budget to spend on Bishop and running mate Greta Schuerch as campaigning gears up for the mid-August primary, according to Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO.

Hall is one of the deputy treasurers of the pro-Bishop independent expenditure group — Alaska’s state-level equivalent to the big-spending super PACs that participate in federal elections.

In a twist on the state’s popular “Pick.Click.Give” program, which allows Alaskans to divert a share of their annual oil checks to charities, the new group is called “Pick Click and Greta for Alaska.” It was registered Monday.

The group’s efforts could prove crucial for Bishop, as the dozen Republicans in the field seek to distinguish themselves and vie for a finite amount of financial support.

Hall’s labor group, the AFL-CIO, is an umbrella organization and hasn’t issued a formal endorsement in the race. But many AFL-CIO members are eager to support Bishop, she added, and officials from two unions — representing carpenters and heavy equipment operators — are also registered as deputy treasurers of the pro-Bishop group.

Hall said there are several other candidates in the field who “really care about working people.”

But, she added, “Click’s just not a politician to us. He is us.”

Bishop has been a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers 302 and worked on construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline when; he’s also been a state labor commissioner.

A campaign spokesperson said Bishop was not immediately available for comment.

Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.

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After more than a year Haines and Skagway have a sport fishing area management biologist again. 

John Whitinger, is a biologist and Alaskan who says he is most drawn to looking at the entire ecosystem when considering the health of individual fish stocks. 

He was born in Kodiak but described a childhood commercial fishing throughout Southeast Alaska.  The 32-year-old is Aleut and has family on Prince of Wales, in Ketchikan and Sitka. “Everywhere I go, I have family,” he said. 

He described power trolling for salmon from a 100-year-old wooden tug with his grandfather. 

“He’d always try to keep me into the school year because that’s when the kings are running,” Whitinger said. 

He moved to Anchorage and after he graduated he said he mostly thought about sports, football specifically. 

“I was defensive line, linebacker, full back,” he said. “I played one year in Tacoma, Washington at the University of Puget Sound. It was a great place for school but we had the longest losing streak in football history and we lost every single game.” 

He walked on at Adams State in Colorado and said he played one more year, then got a concussion and two shoulder injuries and realized that he probably needed to focus on studying fish before he destroyed his body. 

After graduating with a degree in organismal biology, Whitinger taught high school science for a year, cultivating a passion for education that he said he’d like to continue in the Chilkat Valley. 

Then he became a masters student at Northern Michigan University and worked on a project in Little Bay de Noc, which is known as a world class walleye fishery at the upper end of Lake Michigan. He and his professor documented how the fishery had changed over 30 years due to changing conditions in the lake and agricultural run-off that caused fish that used to be in the northern end of the lake to follow food and nutrients to the south. 

“Now, after 10 years of this being the world’s best walleye fishing hole, it has completely flip-flopped and now Wisconsin pulls all of the larger fish from that fishery,” he said. 

It was a chance to do the kind of work Whitinger said he is most interested in, looking at the entire ecosystem and how a fish population fits into it. 

He moved back to Alaska two years ago and said he’s been applying to work for the state ever since, weathering hiring freezes at the state and federal levels. Then, he said, he got exactly what he was looking for.

“The first time I got offered a position, it was not only in Southeast, where I want to be, but it’s in a part of Southeast that [I’m not] super familiar with. So I’m super excited about that,” he said. 

At the top of his to-do list right now is getting boats and a Ski-doo that haven’t been used in more than a year back up and running. 

While he is new to the community, Whitinger said he brings a lot of experience with different kinds of fisheries with him. 

“I’ve worked in the Great Lakes, all freshwater systems with a lot of artificial habitat, a lot of disruption. I’ve also worked in the Gulf [of Mexico],” he said. “I think that seeing this really wide array of what fisheries can look like and how it works in other places is .. something that makes me unique in this position.” 

Just a few days into the job and Whitinger said he’s hearing from a lot of locals, which is how he’d like to spend his first year. 

“I’ve already met several people who said ‘hey, I want to show you the river.’ I’ve had people invite me out on their boats, which has been awesome. If anybody wants me to go out fishing with them and I can do it, I will,” he said.  

That’s how he’ll figure out what people would most like to see addressed in the Upper Lynn Canal fisheries they are using. Also on his priority list is checking in with the Chilkoot Indian Association and Chilkat Indian Village about what they’ve been working on, their goals and local priorities. 

So far the thing most people ask him about first has been king salmon, he said. 

Haines’ king salmon sport fishery has been shut down for nearly a decade. As currently written, this year’s plan is to open it back up again beginning June 14 to both resident and non-resident anglers. 

“Everyone is on edge about how things are going to go because it has been so long and it’s very tense,” Whitinger said. 

Some fisherman have questioned the decision to reopen the fishery and worry that it will put too much pressure on a recovering population. He said everyone he has talked to seems to be the most concerned that the fishery be healthy and managed sustainably. 

“I’ve been talking with regional managers in the last four days… I’ve been on so many calls about this specific subject,” he said. “We’re working incredibly hard to provide fair and equitable access to king salmon this year to all user groups.” 

Looking ahead to managing this season, Whitinger said he was going to rely a lot on the knowledge and experience of other people in the local Fish and Game office. 

“I’m leaning heavily on theirs because I don’t have the background,” he said. “The types of things that you can’t get from showing up here and reading the reg book.” 

The post Meet the new Upper Lynn Canal sport fish area management biologist appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

When a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research project discovered a mysterious object more than two miles underwater in the Gulf of Alaska, scientists were puzzled.

Three years later, NOAA officials can now reveal what the object is: the dead cells that formed the base of a big sea anemone.

Scientists found the orb in deep water west of Prince of Wales Island during an ongoing research program called Seascape Alaska. The program began in 2021 and remains ongoing; it is being carried out to fulfil a national ocean-mapping strategy issued in 2020.

There is a pressing need for such research, according to NOAA. Even today, 61% of the U.S. waters off Alaska remain unmapped, according to the agency.

Accurate mapping is also needed to delineate ocean territorial claims, according to NOAA. Work done through the Seascape Alaska program was used by the U.S. State Department in its 2023 claim to extended continental shelf territory in the High Arctic and Bering Sea.

The puzzling golden orb, which was stuck to a rock, was retrieved by a remotely operated vehicle launched from the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, the primary vessel being used in the Seascape Alaska program.

At the time, scientists speculated that it might be an egg case or a dead marine sponge.

The process of identifying it turned out to be prolonged, and it involved scientists from NOAA Fisheries and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

“We work on hundreds of different samples and I suspected that our routine processes would clarify the mystery,” Allen Collins, a zoologist and director of NOAA Fisheries’ National Systematics Laboratory, said in a statement released by NOAA. “But this turned into a special case that required focused efforts and expertise of several different individuals. This was a complex mystery that required morphological, genetic, deep-sea and bioinformatics expertise to solve.”

The size and fate of the sea anemone that left the orb is yet unknown, said Emily Crum, a spokesperson for NOAA Ocean Exploration.

The orb is about 4 inches wide, she said by email. The sea anemone species associated with it can grow to large sizes, with tentacles stretching up to 7 feet, she said.

The golden orb was not the only unusual discovery made on the seafloor off Alaska.

In 2024, scientists working aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaking cutter Healy discovered a gas-emitting volcano-like structure rising 500 meters from the seafloor in the Arctic Ocean.

That discovery was also part of the Seascape Alaska program, Crum said.

As the program continues, scientists expect to find more unusual items.

“So often in deep ocean exploration, we find these captivating mysteries, like the ‘golden orb’. With advanced techniques like DNA sequencing, we are able to solve more and more of them,” Capt. William Mowitt, acting director of NOAA Ocean Exploration, said in the NOAA statement. “This is why we keep exploring — to unlock the secrets of the deep and better understand how the ocean and its resources can drive economic growth, strengthen our national security, and sustain our planet.” 

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The Alaska Senate advanced a bill Wednesday to establish a savings program for employees whose workplaces do not offer a retirement program.

The Alaska Work and Save Program is what Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage and the bill’s sponsor, called a solution to a retirement savings problem in Alaska. According to a survey by the AARP, nearly half of private-sector employees in Alaska lack a retirement plan.

“This program will help Alaskan businesses offer a competitive benefit at no cost,” he said. 

Wielechowski told legislators that social security payments do not cover the high cost of living for seniors in Alaska, increasing their reliance on SNAP and Medicaid, and small businesses cannot always afford to sponsor a retirement program for their employees. Wielechowski proposed establishing the Alaska Work and Save Program for tax advantaged and portable retirement accounts.

The bill passed with 15 yes votes. Sens. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, Robert Myers, R-North Pole, George Rauscher, R-Sutton, and Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, voted against it. 

Sen. Robert Myers, R-North Pole, said that he was conflicted about the bill because it was unclear to him how businesses would help administer the program.

Senate Bill 21 would develop a retirement program called the Alaska Work and Save Program for employees who are not offered a retirement plan by their employer. Applicants would be able to contribute some or all of their Permanent Fund Dividend and additional contributions through payroll deduction to the individual retirement account. Eligible employees would be automatically enrolled and would be able to opt out of the program.

“It fixes a problem in a way that doesn’t overreach, that helps the business community, that helps workers and is good for our state,” Wielechowski said. “Passing this bill is an important step forward towards genuinely improving the lives of Alaskans by helping them save for a rewarding retirement.”

If the bill becomes law, Alaska would join 15 other states that have automatic savings programs, according to Pew, a nonprofit that oversees the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Small businesses owners across Alaska wrote in letters of support that a lack of retirement benefits makes it difficult for small businesses to compete with larger companies, and the proposed retirement system would be beneficial for small businesses.

Forbidden Peak Brewery Co-Owner Skye Stekoll supported the bill and wrote that “easy access to a public retirement program would make both starting the process of investing and making continued regular investments far more attainable for our employees, and also make it conceivable for employers to contribute in prorated ways based on hours worked, longevity, etc., regardless of the industry.”

Rachael Miller, chief advocacy officer for the Food Bank of Alaska, wrote to legislators that the bill could increase food security for Alaskan seniors.

“By creating a pathway for workers to save for retirement through automatic payroll deductions, the Alaska Work and Save Program will help workers, particularly in fishing, tourism, and gig-based jobs, prepare for retirement and reduce future reliance on emergency food assistance,” she stated in a letter.

The Department of Revenue would administer the Alaska Work and Save Program. According to a fiscal note, the program will cost $808,000 in 2027 and approximately $524,000-$589,000 annually. 

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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.

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