growing a garden – Stephanie Richey Art

Well, while this doesn’t have anything to do with art, this is what has taken up a huge chunk of my time this past week, consequently, art has been on the back burner. However, just as the art is very relaxing for me, so too is gardening, at least most of the time. I am not a green thumb gardener, actually just the opposite. I seem to have a black thumb when it comes to flowers and nonessential grown items, and only slightly less of a black thumb when it comes to edibles in our garden. But over the years I have at least reached the point of being able to grow food. We don’t grow all the food we eat, but we do enjoy having fresh veggies throughout the summer and having some of what we grow that can last through the winter.

I love the quote above, because I thought I had made a lot of mistakes over our many years of gardening. But I have learned so much through those mistakes, so I really do think it is more of the experimenting. We have had 3 different garden spots on our property over the years. The first was 3 raised beds about 20 feet long and 2 feet wide. This was very early in our marriage, so we didn’t need a lot to sustain us through the summer. We would grow some potatoes, different kinds of greens, carrots and peas. Occasionally cabbage and broccoli, but definitely not enough of either for more than a couple of meals. This spot was in the trees, consequently it did not get a lot of direct sunlight, and while it did grow, I didn’t realize how much of a difference the sunlight would make until our third garden spot. Our second garden spot was in some stepped landscaping that we created in the hill of our backyard. This area did not get enough sunlight either as it was facing north, and we didn’t ever get very good quantities out of the beds. Because they were stepped, they were very difficult to till, consequently I ended up turning them over by hand. They were 60 feet long by 3 feet wide, and that was a huge chore that took almost a week just to get the soil ready for planting. I didn’t want to do that forever!

We finally moved the garden down to a sunny spot in our backyard and increased the size, because our family size had increased over the years as well. There are no nearby trees, and the garden gets around 16 hours of sunlight every day. This has been the most productive garden spot we have had. It started out as just a raw piece of land that still had topsoil on it. Each year as my husband tills the garden, the rest of us follow along picking up rocks. It has taken a number of years, but each year there are less and less rocks, and the garden soil looks better and better. Over the years we have learned a lot about amending the soil. Last year we learned a lot about lime, how little lime there is in Alaska’s soil, and how much we needed to add to get our plants to grow well. This year we weren’t able to find the kind of manure we usually use on our garden, in fact there was no sterilized steer manure to be found anywhere in our valley. Consequently, we will be relying more heavily on a commercial fertilizer. We shall see how that works out. I have decided that with the scarcity of soil amending products, that I really should start a compost station at our home. I have never tried this, so it will be another opportunity to learn a new skill. I’ll keep you updated if I get that going.

We grow a variety of vegetables in our garden. The majority of our garden is planted in potatoes. Probably 80% of the area is potatoes. We usually grow a white potato as well as Yukon Gold potatoes. Both of these have been great producers. We have tried a variety of different kinds of potatoes over the years. I really like a purple potato that we had good success with, but my kids had a hard time getting past the color and apparently the taste. To me they tasted just like the white potatoes, but my kids said there was a difference in flavor. Consequently, we keep going back to those 2 great growers, the white and Yukon. The other 20% of our garden has a much bigger variety in it. We grow peas, cabbage, broccoli, radishes, leafy lettuces of different kinds, beets, onions, and carrots. The beets I haven’t had huge success with over the years, so I haven’t planted them in a few years, but I decided to try again this year. We shall see how that goes.

I recently did a YouTube tour of my garden, as well as talked a bit about what we have done over the years to grow a better garden. You can see my Garden Tour here.

Springtime in Alaska is one of my favorite times of the year. March is still considered winter in Alaska, and the amount of snow we still have on the ground would verify that this is still true. But it is a beautiful month. With more sun and more warmth, the snow really starts melting in March and it feels more like spring. April however is when spring really hits. But spring in Alaska is not the same as it is elsewhere.

Alaska’s spring consists of melting snow, more melting snow, a lot more water and melting snow, lots of water and mud, and then summer. Well, there is that one short week where the buds on the trees are huge and then open to reveal a beautiful spring green leaf, the mud has mostly dried up, and a lot of snow is gone, but that’s about as long as it lasts. This year, I am super excited for spring. This winter we have had a lot of snow. My husband, who has lived in Alaska his whole life, reminds me that this year wasn’t the most Willow could have gotten, and has gotten in years past, but he does agree that we have had more this year than we have had in the last several years anyway. For me it is probably one of the biggest snowfall years that I can remember. But I have only been here for about 25 years. The biggest difference this year was the moisture level in the snowfalls. Usually, it is very dry and fluffy. This year, especially during the month of February, the snow had a lot more moisture to it, and it was heavy. This means that it didn’t stack up as high as it could have, but it caused a lot more problems for buildings.

Daylight hours are increasing as well. I grew up in Southern Utah, and I never remember noticing the differences in daylight hours. I’m sure it is mostly because I was a kid, but the swings in daylight hours there aren’t huge either. In Alaska however, it’s impossible not to notice the shifting of daylight. Here in Willow, we have a little over 5 hours of daylight in the middle of winter, with somewhere around 19 hours of daylight in the summer. During the winter it can be difficult for some people to function on that little bit of daylight. I don’t seem to have a problem, but I have found that keeping busy regardless of the daylight hours can be helpful, at least for me. But I really start to notice the extra daylight in the spring. I have noticed that this gives me a boost of energy, especially in the morning, and I start to get excited about all sorts of things like hiking and my garden.

Because my mind shifts to summer things this time of year, I decided it was time to start a few plants that need a little bit of extra growth time before summer gets here. The extra daylight hours mean that I don’t absolutely need grow lights to get them going. So, my kids and I planted some seeds. We planted Broccoli, Cabbage, Onions, Tomatoes, and Peppers. I do not have a green thumb, and consequently, only about half the time does my own starts work for me. But I love having these plants growing in my windows until it’s warm enough to take them outside.

I might be a little bit late for some of these plants, like tomatoes. But in the fall, I end up bringing them inside to finish off the year. I am also getting excited for hiking, looking forward to getting out in nature and enjoying the beauty of the Alaskan summer. Hopefully this summer I will remember to share some of my favorite hikes with you, here on my blog as well as in video form! Today I hope you are enjoying your spring, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere anyway, and that you are looking forward to summer and the fun activities that summer brings!