High-Latitude Gardening: Round One

A few weeks ago I moved to the village I'm going to call home for the summer. It's the village of Beaver Creek, along the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.  The soil quality is poor, growing season short, yet in a few weeks' time there will be 23 hours of daylight.

___________________________________________________________

Beaver Creek, YT - population: 125

While I was doing my Undergrad at Trent I learned how environments along the high-latitudes of the planet are sensitive to the increasing fluctuations in temperature and precipitation caused by climate change.  Since I've been living up here, I've also learned how areas this far north are also senstive to the increasing fluctuations in the cost and movement of goods caused by things like rising oil prices or landslides along the Alaska Highway (currently an issue 4 hours east of town..). 

Food security in the north is a big issue.  The cost of living in the Yukon is expensive.  Food is shipped up here from the south making the amount of "food miles" placed onto an ordinary apple from Ontario, for instance, much greater than most other areas in the country.  With the exception of maybe two or three villages further north, Beaver Creek is the furthest destination from most food distribution centers in Canada (by car, the distance between Toronto and Beaver Creek is 6,000 km).  Because of this, food prices are high and food quality (freshness) is low. 

Whereas many areas further south have access to fresh local food, the Yukon doesn't.  In all of the Yukon, there are very few farms due to poor soil quality and the short growing season.  Most of these farms are located around Whitehorse and usually grow nothing more than hay, I've been told. 

With that said, the 23 hours of daylight through the summer means that vegetables which prefer cooler climates are able to thrive.  The largest kale plant on record, for instance, was grown in Palmer, Alaska.  If it's done right, high-latitude gardening can be very rewarding.

Old container gardens at the back of the property - mid-May

Once I arrived to Beaver Creek I looked around to see where (or if) I would be able to plant a small vegetable garden.  Sylvian, one of the returning workers here, had built a few container gardens in the past and says it's really the only way food can be grown in this type of an environment. 

Here are a couple reasons why:

We salvage and screen whatever soil
we can find -  like flower pots.

1.  Due to the permafrost, ground temperature up here is consistantly cold.  I've been told that carrots (if one were to actually attempt to grow them up here) will often begin to grow horizontally (making a "J" shape) due to the temperature of the ground just beneath the Earth's surface.  They simply want to stay as close to the surface as possible, where it is the warmest.

Boreal forest, with muskeg floor.

2.  Muskeg covers the forest floor, rather than soil.  Much of the boreal forest (stretching from Alaska, through the Yukon, northern Ontario to Labrador) is made up by a type of northern wetland - consisting of moss (often 2 feet thick) and a bunch of smaller plants which grow out of the moss.  Aspen, cedar and black spruce are the most common trees which grow out of the muskeg.  Carrots do not.  Nor does any other vegatable which grows out of soil, rather than moss (the vast, vast majority).

For these reasons, container gardens are often used to grow food in the Yukon.  The bonus, as mentioned above, are the 20 - 23 hours of daylight in the summer.  To catch the most amount of sunlight, Sylvian builds containers atop of old skids.  During late-August and September he moves the containers with a fork-lift to the roof of surrounding buildings to catch more sun as it moves just above the horizon.

I'm using two of Sylvian's skid-containers and building two more using his approach. 

More on this to come.