Category: Season Extension

Building a Four Season Greenhouse

Kim Finkle

I know I am not the only one!  Each fall, the lower the mercury starts to drop, the fuller my house becomes with summer’s plants that I cannot bare to kill. Sometimes things become absurd. Forget using the hot tub, it is now the Arctic Petunia Sanctuary.  The grape vine, re-designated a house plant, attacks and strangles the ceiling fan.   Come February, the living room becomes the seed nursery.  Regular furniture gives way to large folding tables, all covered with flats of starts.  It happens for so many years that Read More …

The Great Tomato Fiasco of 2015 or How I Sweltered My Way to Wisdom

Jenna Miller

2015 In autumn 2014, my partner built us a “sunroom” off the side of our house in Kenai, Alaska. He intended to use it for storage; I intended to fill it with plants come summertime. In the first week of March 2015, I bought indoor seed starting lights and mats and seeded dozens of plants indoors–including about 30 tomato plants in five varieties. I had Romas, Tumbling Toms, Sub-Arctic 25s, and a couple more varieties I can’t recall now. As it turns out, I didn’t have the space for 30 Read More …

Before and After : 2 quick season extension tips

Debora

My quest for extending the growing season began after my move to Alaska in 2001. Raised in the Midwest I grew up eating tomatoes on the vine, toasted tomato sandwiches, and canning bushels of tomatoes. After all, tomatoes are SO easy to grow and very plentiful — right? Well, I see the smile on your knowing faces because after I moved to Alaska it took me nearly a decade to taste my first fresh tomatoes from the vine, and mind you it was not a plentiful bounty. A few years Read More …