Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

A hot and dry spell in June left some local gardeners with subpar lettuce. But on the whole this year's growing season was a success, especially in the upper valley.

"This year we grew potatoes," Mosquito Lake Victory Garden coordinator Erika Merklin said. "They were huge, huge, huge."

She said production was about the same as last year, when the volunteer-run garden hit its stride. It was established behind the Mosquito Lake Community Center three years ago.

Other upper valley gardeners had similarly strong seasons.

"It all went pretty well this year," said Swan Song Farm owner Helena Muench. "I'm out at Mosquito Lake. I grow all of our food. It's just me and my husband. I grow all the vegetables, all the produce we eat, and then some. I always grow too much and overwhelm myself."

Muench grows vegetables and flowers, which she sold at the Haines Farmer's Market this summer. "It was a really good growing season. That hot spell in June: I have a good irrigation system, so nothing was too bothered by that. And fortunately it wasn't too rainy, so the flowers did okay," Muench said. Her onions and garlic did especially well - "nice baseball-sized onions."

The one crop that lagged were peppers, Muench said. But even her brassicas, which like cold weather, thrived after the early heat.

"Maybe after that hot spell, it got cool and damper, which they like. And some of (it) may be that I did a few things differently. It's so hard to know. Is it the weather? Or maybe just growing in a different location where there's better fertility? Maybe a different variety?" Muench said.

She didn't have as many pest issues as years past. Last year she said slugs were more prevalent. And this year they've gone for her carrots, which she hasn't seen before, although there are fewer of them.

"This year I feel like everything – other than mainly the peppers – did really well. So that kind of stands out as unusual to me," Muench said.

Gardening always brings surprises and new challenges, especially in the Chilkat Valley, where weather is variable.

Longtime upper valley gardener Mardell Gunn observed that the early hot and dry spell was followed by significant rainfall later in the summer. "I think it's a sign of the times that we have extremes. Let's get used to it," she said.

She said the heat helped some of her crops, and that most did well. She succeeded, for the first time, at growing melons.

"I've never been able to grow melons before. That's the crop I was saying I was a little surprised at how well they did," Gunn said. "It seems like they really needed that heat when they were getting established in June."

Gunn said gardeners who couldn't keep up with watering early in the summer might have suffered more from the weather. She also said soil type makes a difference. For example, the victory garden's plot is rich with clay, which retains more water than Gunn's sandy soil.

Despite the differences, some patterns emerge each year. This year, Gunn said, there is "one thing that is consistent; everyone is talking about how huge their potatoes are."

Like the Victory Garden, Gunn said she grew "monster" potatoes this year. "I grew about 10 to 15 of the biggest potatoes I've ever grown," She said. "I don't know what to attribute that to."

In town, Laurie Mastrella said the hot weather early on affected Sunshine Farms' lettuce and cabbage, which are cold-weather crops. Sunshine is a cooperative garden near Pieded Road.

Mastrella said the season was "overall pretty average for us." While some of the cold-weather crops struggled, zucchini and garlic performed well. Mastrella said the gardeners tried okra for the first time, "a real stretch" considering okra grows in the tropics and subtropics. It didn't succeed.

But Mastrella said they found some success with eggplant, another warm-weather crop that's ambitious to grow in Alaska.

Scott Hansen at Sunnyside Farms said lettuces, brassicas, strawberries and carrots did well this year. "Our kale patch had excellent flavor and size. It has a foundation of composted soil from our animals. Animals are, among other things, walking organic composters. Even with the wet, slug/worm losses weren't too bad," Hansen wrote in an email to the CVN.

Sunnyside has been cycling potatoes to improve soil nutrients, so they didn't see the monster taters this year that Gunn did. But unlike some of the other local gardeners, both Gunn and Hansen observed slime and mildew on onions and garlic due to moisture.

Hansen said Sunnyside plans to expand production next year with three acres next to the golf course. The farms' vision, he said, "is to be a field crop producer with the capacity to serve our community cold-weather products. Haines has land to grow these crops, and a surprising amount of money crosses the table for basic cold-weather crops - potatoes, carrots, lettuces, garlic, brassicas, onions, strawberries, green beans, and others."

Sunnyside also has 175 new blueberry plants at the Anway field that should start producing in coming years, Hansen said.

At Marvin's Garden - the Haines School garden run by Takshanuk Watershed Council - students harvested 150 pounds of carrots and 190 pounds of potatoes. Takshanuk education coordinator Tracy Wirak-Cassidy said the growing season went well, furnishing lots of large purple carrots.

Partially in keeping with the potato trend, Wirak-Cassidy said "we had some gigantic potatoes - like the biggest potatoes I had ever seen." She added, "Also some really, tiny ones. We had everything."