Category: Interior Alaska

The Alaska peony industry turns 25 in 2025

 

Twenty-five years after University of Alaska Fairbanks horticulture researcher Pat Holloway’s initial discovery that Alaska held a niche in the peony market due to its unique bloom time and access to markets, the peony farming scene has ebbed and flowed. 

From the first research plots being planted around 2001, to the boom between roughly 2014 and 2016, to post-COVID and high inflation rates that have left no business untouched, many farmers have come and gone. Those on the scene today are business savvy, hard-working, energetic, and have the health and lifestyles that allow them to focus on peonies full-tilt for at least six weeks during the height of the summer.

The peony farming gold rush in Alaska started because the flowers garnered a high price per stem due when they bloom. That is, they bloomed in Alaska in July and August during prime wedding season. At that time, peonies are not blooming elsewhere or at least nowhere with ready access to air transport and other infrastructure needed to export them. 

The number of peonies planted in Alaska increased exponentially from 20 roots in 2004 to over 120,000 roots in 2012. In 2013, 150 peony farmers (or interested farmers) attended the Alaska Peony Growers Association (APGA) meeting which was close to the peak of interest. There was an effort to reach a global market (including Europe and Asia) through cooperatively marketed peonies. 

coral charm peonies blooming in a field

APGA was instrumental in inspiring, educating and connecting new peony farmers, partly fueled by the desire to meet the demand of larger buyers through cooperatives like the Arctic Alaska Peony Cooperative. In the Last Frontier Magazine, North Pole peony grower Ron Illingworth said, “The thing we’re trying to do is to encourage people to get plants in the ground because we have the 100,000 stems-per-week demand.” 

He said Asian and European markets were paying $4 to $10 stem, with the wholesale price at the lower end and the retail price at the higher end. In today’s dollars, that would be equivalent to $5 to $13 per stem.

Brad Fluetsch with Rainforest Peonies said he could earn up to $800,000 in a year in 2015, equivalent to more than a million in today’s dollars. Many jumped into the game with the lure of the high price per stem and potential falaskahigh income.

But stems actually sold for much less, more in the range of $3 to $5.50 a stem depending on grade, quantity, variety and market. A 2020 article that delineated different price points in different markets is still accurate, according to industry expert Ko Klaver and Boreal Peony farmers Rudy Klaver and Eli Brockman.

Looking at a few online stores in 2024, Fox Hollow sold individual stems for $3.50 to $6 each, depending on the variety. For 100 premium stems, the price was $4.50 and for 50 premium stems it was $5.50. North Pole Peonies sold 25 or more stems for $4.50 to $5 each. The Alaska Peony Market sold stems for $4 to $6.50 with no minimum order, plus shipping.

No one has become a millionaire from peony farming in Alaska, but there were two farms with sales over $100,000 in 2019 and 2020 according to USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Floriculture Crop Summary. Rita Jo Shoultz, owner of Alaska Perfect Peony is one of those farmers and is the most successful peony farmer in Alaska. About half of her business is selling peony roots from Holland. She writes a blog with helpful information for other peony growers. 

stacks of peony stems ready for shipment displayed
Peony stems harvested before they bloom for shipping. Photo courtesy of Boreal Peonies.

Cut flower sales (not grown in a greenhouse) in Alaska more than doubled from about $1 million in 2017 (from 100 farms) to $2.4 million in 2022 (from 121 farms). This includes diversified cut flower growers that may grow a handful of peonies or none at all. Looking at all farms in Alaska (not just peony farms) in 2022, the majority (62%; 724) reported net losses while 48 percent (449) reported net gains, of, on average, $60,727.

The real niche for Alaska peony farmers is the U.S. market, even though only 22% of the U.S. flower and foliage market is American-grown, according to Certified American Grown Flowers. Climate change and refrigeration capabilities do mean peonies are available from other sources at the same time as those grown in Alaska, but Ko Klaver, president and CEO of Botanical Trading Co. and floriculture industry expert, said even though you can store a peony for a long time, it’s never going to get any better. 

Plus the Netherlands’ Shiphol Airport, which moves much of the world’s cut flowers, announced in 2024 that it was increasing airport fees by 37% over the next three years. Alaska has a distinct advantage in the U.S. market because of how much cheaper and easier it is to sell domestically versus internationally.

Martha Lojewski, executive director of the Alaska Peony Coop, explains why they don’t ship internationally anymore: “We shipped to Canada for three years. They would get stuck in customs, it would be unnecessarily delayed and the perishable product would no longer be usable by the time it got to the customer.”

pink peonies blooming that are staked up.

Now that it’s a more mature industry, there may be real opportunities to get into peony farming:

  • Peonies bloom in July and August in Alaska when they’re not really blooming elsewhere or at least not domestically and not in locations with good access to air transport. This presents a niche for the domestic market.
  • A great deal of research has been done on peony farming in Alaska.
  • Instead of starting a farm from scratch and needing to clear land, build soil, purchase roots, plant roots, and wait three to five years to sell stems, you may be able to purchase a peony farm that is in production.
  • Education, advocacy, and support are available through the floriculture committee under the Alaska Farm Bureau.
  • At least two peony cooperatives in Alaska help farmers pool resources, market and sell the stems, and share information: Alaska Beauty Peony Co-Op (11 farms) and the Alaska Peony Cooperative (six to nine farms; 10 years old).

There are some important questions to consider before starting a peony farm:

  • Are you willing to learn and engage in all aspects of the business? You’ll need to learn how to grow the peonies, handle them post-harvest, market them, and ship them as well as run a business. Cooperatives may be able to help with some aspects of the business, but you can’t rely on that for sure, as some have failed.
  • Are you willing to go the extra mile (literally) to market to your customers? Shoultz told me she travels across the country to meet and build relationships with her customers.
  • According to a couple of farmers, break-even prices are $2 to $2.15, so you have to make sure you have a large enough market at a high enough price point to make a profit. You do not want to end up with too much product that you can’t move and have to dump it at a loss.
  • How energetic are you? Shoultz said she puts in 15-hour days during the peak of the season. She is 82 years old. Rudy Klaver and Eli Brockman (both 19 years old) put in 22-hour days at the peak. That may be a hard lift for many of us.
  • Are you planting the farm in your backyard? This could link two large assets together — your farm and your house — which may mean you need to sell both when you only want to sell one. You can avoid this issue by living in tents or cabins on a separate farm property during the peony season or ensuring your house is far enough away, and on a separate lot from your fields.
  • Do you want a new hobby or a business? Ko Klaver says many peony farmers started growing flowers more as a hobby, and hobbies cost money. On the other hand, Lojewski sees her farm more as a way to live a fulfilling lifestyle, and profit is secondary to that.

Lojewski, in a 2022 interview with Corrine Heck of Details Flowers, said there are a couple of key considerations before getting into peony farming: “Do you want to owe your life to the farm and do you have deep pockets? It takes at least five years to sell anything so you’ve got to have another source of income for those five years, and even after that years six, seven, and eight you’re crawling to get any kind of ground on monetary gain on a farm. It’s fun. It’s not for retirement. But it is so much work. It’s a lot of bending up and down, repairing irrigation lines pounding stakes, restringing things, 50 pounds of fertilizer. You have to be very inventive, creative, MacGyver everything.” She said that peony farming is a year-round job although peak season is July and August and she does try to take October off.

Do you want to owe your life to the farm and do you have deep pockets? Martha Lojewski

When I talked to Lojewski, she said even though she is business-minded about the farm, at the end of the day what she values is spending time with her family outdoors all summer, and if it pays for itself, that’s great. They live in an off-grid cabin near Willow, and they’re on farm time. Her kids eat when they’re hungry, go to bed when they’re tired, and have to find things to do other than being on screens. Everyone’s on deck during harvest time. They started with 5,000 plants but downscaled to 3,500 which, in addition to some reliable labor, has allowed them to enjoy the summer in Alaska more — hiking, paddle boarding, and more.

In an interview with Alaska Public Media’s Kim Sherry in 2024, Lojewski said, “Who doesn’t want to be a flower farmer? It sounds like a fabulous job on paper, right? Growing flowers and making people happy. You forget about the bugs and the weeds and picking in the rain.” 

Some peony farmers have certainly found their place in the industry — overcoming challenges and reaping rewards — monetary or otherwise, and there is room for more.

Published in the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer February 16, 2025.

Growing, Gathering, Hunting, and Fishing for Your Food is Part of the Challenge—Eating it is the Other

 

One of the things I’ve long been curious about is how much food Alaskans grow, hunt, fish and gather and why they do it. This fall, I interviewed Jeff Yacevich, 38, who along with his wife, Laura Guiterrez, 40, is committed to getting much of his food from the land. They live in a cabin tucked away in a somewhat swampy spruce forest on permafrost in Goldstream Valley.

Jeff in red sweatshirt next to fenced garden full of brassicas

They estimate that each year they put up about 20 gallons of blueberries, 10 gallons of cranberries, and a couple of gallons of cloudberries, if they can find them. They aim to hunt for most of their meat, although in recent years they have purchased half a pig for bacon. They also fish for salmon and about 20 pike each year. 

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How does your garden grow? Through the seasons in an Alaska garden.

 

This year, I decided to document my garden through the seasons. One of the incredible things about gardening in Alaska is how your garden transforms overnight. It’s magical, amazing, and perhaps why I love gardening. Only this summer Things. Did. Not. Grow. Until July. But then there were some pleasant surprises. 

August 11, 2023: Herbs and nasturtiums are thriving.

Here is how my garden grew this summer. . .

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Bump Up Your Strawberry Production

 

There are never enough strawberries in our patch — I think my kids and my neighbor’s kids would agree!

I am not the only one who is figuring out how to grow strawberries successfully in Alaska. One of the top posts on my blog, It Grows in Alaska, is Untangling the Mysteries of Growing Strawberries in Alaska. To figure what I can do to bump up my strawberry production, I interviewed Andy Harper, a local strawberry farmer in Two Rivers, Alaska, as well as University of Minnesota researchers who have studied annual strawberry production using a low tunnel system.

strawberries in a box
Photo by Andy Harper.

Andy has a half acre of strawberries in production this year. Some of those plants are research plants. He said he started the farm because, “I love berries, I lived in the UK and Scotland, they love black currants, I love those. I met Papa [Meunier] and he had everything. All different types of berries. I just loved berries. So I decided I wanted to do berry farming. Strawberries are the only ones I can make money on the first year.”

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Gardening in Ruby, Alaska

 
Full length shot of Evelyn sarten in mud boots.
Evelyn Sarten in her garden. Photo by Molly Cerridwen.

Evelyn Sarten and her late husband Ed (Dwight) have gardened in Ruby, Alaska, for a quarter of a century. Evelyn, who was raised on the land on a Native American reservation in Taos, New Mexico, estimates she grows about 30% of her food. 

She was taught to live with the land and she’s always grown her own food. Their garden in Ruby is characterized by innovation and making do with what is available. For instance, their chicken coop fence was constructed from an old couch frame, old bed frames, and leftover fencing from the school. Now her one remaining chicken lives in her Arctic entryway.

In addition to growing her own large garden, she also works for the Native Village of Ruby as the natural resources and agriculture program director, helping others in Ruby garden as well. With Evelyn, I and the Tribes Extension Program (www.uaf.edu/ces/tribes) sent out vegetable and flower seeds and organized gardening and plant foraging workshops at the school. We also purchased and built a raised bed garden for the school.

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Gardening in the Wind

 

I grew up in Fairbanks and according to my memory, it was never windy. Without wind, 40 below zero is not that cold. Without wind, you can water your garden and it stays moist for the day. Without wind, plastic row covers do not blow away. You get the idea. I am not a huge fan of the wind. 

This spring, in addition to the wind, we had very dry (drought) conditions. I direct seed a large portion of my garden and the seeds need to be kept wet until they emerge. Keeping the seeds moist was really hard to do this spring because of the combination of hot, dry, windy weather. To keep the seeds moist, I used drip irrigation, covered the seedlings with Remay (frost cloth), and watered the seeds sometimes three times a day with a sprayer hose. Later in the summer, it is so much easier to keep a garden watered because the plants provide shade and they have roots.

blown over trees
The August 2022 windstorm blew over trees across a driveway near Fairbanks, AK. Photo by Julie Strickland.

Not only did the breeze seem to be a more constant companion this spring, there were also a couple of uncommonly intense windstorms in July and August. In Golden Valley Electric Association’s (GVEA) Ruralite magazine (September 2022), Josh Davis, the director of operations said, “The July wind storm was the worst storm we’ve had in my 18 years here.” He noted that the August windstorm was also pretty bad. 

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Flowering Vines

 

I like to grow edible plants. The rest of my family prefers flowers. One of my sisters is a peony farmer. And the other one lived in Jordan for years and was particularly fond of flowering vines. She wanted to know which ones grow here so that got me thinking: Which climbing flowers do thrive in Fairbanks?

I’m not talking about gushing flowers like bakopa, lobelia or creeping Jenny that flood baskets hung all over town. I’m talking about flowers that clamber from the ground up clutching on fences, trellises, tepees and pergolas.

Fast and easy to grow, the Black Eyed Susan vine comes in a rainbow of colors although orange and yellow are the most common. It can even be grown in a hanging basket.

Easiest and most trustworthy are canary bird and black-eyed Susan vines, sweet peas, scarlet runner beans, climbing nasturtiums and morning glories. Fairbanks researchers described Milky Way morning glory as a “vigorous, thick vine covered with blooms” that proffered a “very attractive display all summer” and “grew rapidly (covering) the trellis by midsummer.” Don’t bother with Cypress Vine, which did not flower at all in trials.

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Growing a Cut Flower Garden

 

A slew of research and attention has been given to peonies in recent years, but research on growing other cut flowers in Alaska has been limited in the last decade. To get an idea of which cut flowers are growing well in Fairbanks in recent years, I asked a few farmers about their go-to cut flowers for creating unique, locally grown bouquets. 

Caitlyn Huff with Arctic Blooms and Bouquets has loved flowers since she was a girl, but got into the flower farming business when she moved into a house in Fairbanks with 600 peonies. She grows flowers and arranges bouquets for weddings, the farmers market, a CSA, and bazaars (as dried flower arrangements). She loves the beauty and joy they bring people. 

buckets of dahlias and zinnias in a market display
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Growing Winter Squash and Pumpkins in Interior Alaska

 

Heidi and her two sisters holding large zucchini squash in their childhood garden with large sunflowers in the background.

My sisters and I (far left) reluctantly helping harvest more zucchini in our Fairbanks garden. Photo by Maggi Rader.

I grew up in Fairbanks eating much more zucchini than any kid should have to. Of course I never minded when it masqueraded as bread peppered with chocolate chips. These days, kids in Fairbanks are lucky–they also get to enjoy winter squash and pumpkins which is becoming a much more feasible crop across Alaska.

Indisputably, the most knowledgeable and experienced winter squash and pumpkin grower in Fairbanks is Virgil Severns. He has grown the crop for over 30 years with his wife Anne and recently published a pamphlet on the topic. I wondered what attracted him to the crop originally and he said, “The thing that got me started really, years ago, the experiment station and the plant materials center offered a bunch of seeds and so I got some of those seeds and I planted them and they did well so it got me started growing squash.”

The pamphlet explains which varieties will grow best in Interior Alaska and cautions that some types (acorn, butternut, delicata, and sweet dumpling) are sensitive to our long days and as a result, do not produce female flowers in time for the fruits to mature. Continue reading

Growing Spring Flowers from Bulbs and Corms in Interior Alaska

 

In Interior Alaska, tulips and daffodils are uncommon. You might find them cozied up to a building, downtown in yards with slightly warmer soil due to the steam heat or in the hills.

For those of us who have lived farther south—even farther south in Alaska—we know that there’s a lot we’re missing in terms of spring color. Many spring-blooming bulbs, including tulips, are only hardy to Zone 3 or 4 on the USDA’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Some areas of Fairbanks are Zone 1 on paper. But recent, mild winters and a protected garden bed next to my house have inspired me to try my luck with tulips. 

One year, I planted whatever type of bulb looked pretty at the grocery store—I think it was Pinochio, a Greigii tulip. Those came up the first spring after a mild winter.

a pink pointy tulip probably pinochio

Later, I did a little more research into hardier bulbs and ones that would multiply, and I planned ahead and ordered them. They included Plaisir, Purple Lord, Alibi and Violacea tulips. Most of these tulips (maybe all) bloomed nicely. In springs three and four, they continued to multiply and survive.

purple tulips blooming in a bed
Purple Lord and Pinochio tulips bloom in a flower bed close to my house. You can also see peony plants emerging.

The first year the tulips are most likely to bloom, if you purchased nice, healthy bulbs. I planted Violate tulips in a bed that was not next to the house and exactly zero emerged, let alone bloomed. Because this garden bed doubled as our snow dump likely played a role in this.

The Georgeson Botanical Garden trialed a smattering of flowering bulbs in the 1990s. Of the tulips, Tarda tulip emerged from the winter with the least amount of injury and survived more years than other tulips at the garden. Bright Gem, United States, and Persian Pearl survived, but not unscathed, from the winter. 

In general, Scilla tends to winter over well in Fairbanks and sometimes grape hyacinth does as well. Snowdrops are also hardy. But Scilla, grape hyacinths and snowdrops are too diminutive to satisfy my need for color after a long, white winter. And if the winter is particularly brutal with minimal snow cover, then only the hardiest will survive. In Northern Garden Symphony: Combining Hardy Perennials for Blooms All Season, Cyndie Warbelow recommends a showy allium called ‘Purple Sensation’ as another bulb to consider planting in the fall.

For bulbs, planning is key, especially for the first year. You’ll need to plant the bulbs two or three weeks before the ground is frozen. This will give them time to establish roots, without the shoots emerging. Warbelow recommends planting bulbs in late August to early September or when the soil temperatures are in the mid to low 50s (Fahrenheit).

Warbelow also recommends planting bulbs just 1-3 inches deep so that they are in the layer of soil that thaws first in the spring. The standard recommendation is to plant tulips and daffodils 5-6 inches deep and smaller bulbs like Scillas and grape hyacinths, 2-3 inches deep. If the ground is wet when you plant the bulbs, there is no need to water, but if it’s dry you should water them a bit. Well-drained soil is ideal, especially if it is a very wet fall because the bulbs could rot. Incorporate a little fertilizer before planting—organic or slow-release works best since the bulbs will use it in the spring. Adequate snow cover or mulch is a must for Fairbanks. These types of bulbs require a jolt of cold—but they don’t need 40 below cold, which, if not mulched properly, could likely kill the bulbs. What Fairbanks does have going for it is generally dry conditions and sometimes hot summers.

It can be tricky to find bulbs when you need them. You might spot them at grocery stores and local greenhouses, but they may not be the variety you want or the hardiest varieties. It’s easy to find myriad varieties online, but many companies don’t ship to Alaska. If they do ship to Alaska, they may very well ship them too late—when the ground is frozen or nearly frozen and covered with snow. So double-check that the company will ship bulbs to you earlier than to other customers.

In the spring, peel back the mulch, water, and fertilizer with a slow-release or organic fertilizer. To encourage the bulbs to naturalize and multiply, cut the flower stems after they’re past their prime. Cut the leaves back only after they’ve withered so the bulbs can store nutrients for next year. If they survive the first year and begin to multiply, then you can treat them much like you would treat your other perennials. Some bulbs tend to multiply better than others. If they do multiply, in the fall you can divide the bulbs and plant either right away, giving them more space than if you had not divided them, or store cool and dry to be planted later, but no later than a year.

I have my bulbs planted in a bed with peonies and also usually interplant some showy annuals. This provides nice, successive color. I’m already looking forward to their bright show!

Previously published in the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer Septemper 9, 2017. Updated February 10, 2022.