Alaska is in five different areas, separated completely different environments. I lived in the interior region of Alaska, a town called North Pole, Alaska, about 15 miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska. The interior of Alaska Denali Park stretches from north to south of the old circle.
The environment here is very difficult to measure in the winter, with temperatures down to -60 degrees for several weeks during the year and the average temperaturebetween -20 and -30 for several months during the winter. With temperatures like this, the result is very short growing seasons. The growing season usually starts the first week of June, when soil temperature gets above 65 degrees, and normally ends the last week of August.
With this short of a growing season, the challenge for the gardener is to extend the growing season. During my stay there, I managed to extend my growing season by almost three months. Here is how I extended the growing season:
1. I started my seedlings indoors around the first of May. I would keep them close to a window for sunlight till the first week of April
2. First week of April I would transfer the seedlings to my heated greenhouse. I needed to have a heated greenhouse because the sun would not heat the greenhouse sufficiently enough to get the soil temperature above 65 degrees.
3. The first week of June the soil temperature outside was warm enough to remove some the greenhouse plants. I would especially like flowers and plants inside the house. I left most of the vegetables in the greenhouse. The reason I did this because the external growth ends the last week of August and I could be an additional month at the end of growing seasons, using my heated greenhouse.
I have found that growing potatoes when the soil temperature is 45 degrees or higher. Let me start out than usual the first weekApril.
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