In the Alaska Garden with Heidi Rader
I often make a point to photograph the stunning hanging flower baskets around Fairbanks. A few years ago, I wrote an article about Festival of Fairbanks’ baskets and other standouts. In 2025, the baskets outside of Bahn Thai Restaurant stood out to me.
Sam Knapp could do anything. He has degrees in physics and chemistry as well as an advanced degree in plant ecology. Yet, here he is in Fairbanks, Alaska, making a living growing a wide variety of crops that he stores and sells only in the winter. Oh, and writing about it. I asked him why.
Post-college, Sam worked as an engineer in an office and volunteered on a farm on the weekends. He found the weekend work a lot more rewarding than the office work. Climate change mitigation and food security motivate him as well. Although reality has set in and his view of farming is less idyllic, he still finds the work satisfying, worthwhile and well aligned with his values.
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Steve and Sara Masterman grow fruit outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. I had the pleasure of interviewing them about their decades old orchard in Fairbanks. I was blown away by the depth of their knowledge of growing fruit in a cold climate. Steve described it as an addiction.
Steve grew up on a 12 acre farm in Wales, United Kingdom. His family raised cattle, chickens, turkeys, ducks and had a small orchard. He couldn’t believe he when heard about a guy growing apples off of Chena Hotsprings Road. He had to see it for himself and soon bought his first two apple trees from Clair Lamers.
It was 2007 and those were some of the last trees Claire sold. Claire was the master fruit grower in Interior Alaska for many years and taught Steve how to graft.
Continue readingIt’s not hard to dream about what you will plant in your garden when the seed catalogs start arriving, or you go to the greenhouse and see the luscious vegetables and gorgeous flowers. However, an overcrowded garden will be less bounteous and beautiful than a thoughtfully planned one with adequately spaced plants.
When choosing what to grow, try to find relevant information that is local, unbiased, and not profit-driven. Seed companies and catalogs are a great source of information, but they may not have done trials in Alaska. At the end of the day, they are also a business. When buying seeds, look for varieties that are identified as being adapted to short, cool growing seasons. For some crops like onions or strawberries you need to consider how day-length affects fruit maturation and keep your eye out for day-neutral varieties. For crops like spinach, look for bolt-resistant varieties. Take note that some varieties are developed to be grown in containers and some in a greenhouse.
Continue readingMy favorite berries are blueberries (wild Alaskan ones of course!) and raspberries, but I have a special place in my heart for currants as well. Like many Americans, currants aren’t a mainstay. I first heard about currants from my grandma who lived in Anchorage. She was fanatic about them and currant jelly specifically. But I didn’t really appreciate them until later in life when I took a berry class from Dr. Pat Holloway. Importantly, I learned to identify them. This is an important first step in identifying any wild berry, particularly if there is a poisonous berry that is the similar color (there is and it is bane berry!). Wild currants can also be mistaken for high bush cranberries. Unlike high bush cranberries and lowbush cranberries which are too tart for me to want to eat fresh and high bush too seedy, I like fresh currants. I also like them made into syrup and jelly as well. You can make currant jam but it’s not easy! I prefer eating red currants fresh to black currants because their skin is much thicker. However, black currants have even higher antioxidant levels and vitamin C levels than red currants.
There are six species of black and red currants that are native to Alaska. Searching Ribes in plants.usda.gov via the Alaska State search will bring up all the species of Ribes in Alaska, including gooseberries. I’ve never seen them in quantity enough to pick many in the wild, but that may change along with the climate. In the wild, I find currants in the understory of forested areas, and so unlike many berries that prefer full sun, you can grow currants in partial shade.
Continue readingMost gardeners I know tend to be fairly haphazard with their raspberry patches and that may include myself. And you can be because they tend to spread on their own (much more than you might want in some cases) and come back year after year without too much effort. However, with some forethought to the soil, attention to variety you’re planting, and regular pruning, you can maximize the quality and production of your raspberry patch.
Raspberries are personally one of my favorite berries to eat fresh or frozen. Although American red raspberries (Rubus idaeus L.) grow wild throughout Alaska, they can be annoyingly small and wormy, although their intense taste does compensate somewhat for these drawbacks. But in my backyard, I’d rather grow larger, more productive cultivars of raspberries. Raspberries also meet most of the criteria I have when choosing what to grow: they are a high dollar item, best fresh, highly perishable, can be eaten without cooking, can be harvested successively, and are something my family will eat as much of as I can grow. As with strawberries, there is a lot to learn about how to maximize production.
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.
Here is how my garden grew this summer. . .
Continue readingThere 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.
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.” Papa “Larry” Meunier was a legendary berry grower and cultivator in Interior Alaska and a longtime Tanana Valley Farmers Market vendor.)
Continue readingGardening for the first time can be daunting, especially in Alaska with the added challenges of a short growing season, sometimes too-cool weather, and sometimes very hot weather. Although the internet provides a wealth of information, when you’ve never done something before, sometimes you don’t even know what questions to ask. Here are some questions you may not have known to ask.
The first thing to think about when starting a garden is where are you going to put it?
An ideal garden spot would get eight or more hours of direct sunlight; have rich, loose soil free of weeds, rocks and roots; be a good distance from trees and shrubs; have an easily accessible water source; and have an 8- foot-high fence to keep moose and other pests out. That’s the ideal, but many of us garden in less than ideal spots because that’s what we have available. However, it’s something to work toward or arrange if you can.
Do artichokes grow in Alaska? Why yes, they do! Unlike in warmer climates, here they are usually grown as annuals rather than perennials. They’re not something I’ve seen commonly grown or at farmers markets, but they have been grown in Fairbanks as far back as 1984 and are being trialed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
About a decade ago, as an Extension employee, Taylor Maida grew artichokes in Fairbanks. Now as the trials manager at High Mowing Organic Seeds, she said artichokes growing in Fairbanks looked better than in Vermont! Her favorite vegetable to grow and eat is the artichoke.
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