April 30, 2010 by Charles Bingham

• St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden work party takes place on Saturday, May 1

St. Peter's Fellowship Farm sign

The next work party to get the St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden ready for planting later this month takes place from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday, May 1. St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm is located behind the See House behind St. Peter’s By The Sea Episcopal Church on Lincoln Street. Tools and gloves will be provided.

Food grown at the St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden is sold at the Sitka Farmers Markets, which take place on alternate Saturdays starting on July 17. For more information about the May 1 work party, contact Doug Osborne at 747-3752 or doug_las@att.net, or contact Lisa Sadleir-Hart at 747-5985 or 3akharts@acsalaska.net.

Planting parties at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm take place from 2-4 p.m. on three straight Saturdays in mid-May — May 15, 22 and 29 — safely after the last frost of the spring. For more information on the planting parties, contact Lisa Sadleir-Hart at 747-5985 or 3akharts@acsalaska.net.

April 12, 2010 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka gardeners to meet Tuesday, April 20, at UAS-Sitka Campus

Local gardener Evening Star Grutter of Eve's Farm, shown here with some of her homemade jams during the Aug. 29, 2009, Sitka Farmers Market, will be the guest speaker at April's meeting of the Sitka Gardeners Club

The Sitka Gardeners Club’s monthly get-together takes place from 7-8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 20, in Room 106 at the University of Alaska Southeast-Sitka Campus on Japonski Island.

The get-together provides a venue for gardeners of all types, interests and skills to informally exchange ideas, information, seeds and growing tips. Share and learn from other gardeners with no dues or commitments other than good fellowship.

Sitka gardeners plan to meet on the third Tuesday of the month at the UAS-Sitka Campus. This month’s meeting will feature gardening tips from Evening Star Grutter of Eve’s Farm, and it is sponsored by UAS-Sitka Campus and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service. For more information, call Cheryl Stromme at 747-9473 or Bob Gorman at 747-9413.

March 18, 2010 by Charles Bingham

• Florence Welsh updates her popular garden guide for Sitka

Florence Welsh with copies of her Sitka gardening book

One of Sitka’s best known gardeners is Florence Welsh, who heads up The Welsh Family Forget-Me-Not Gardens. The Welsh family has been gardening in Sitka since 1984, and the garden on Davidoff Street has been used to teach other gardeners what works in Sitka. Several years ago Florence wrote a guide to help other gardeners take advantage of her family’s experiences trying to grow edible and ornamental plants in Sitka using organic methods.

This past winter, Florence updated her book and during the “Let’s Grow Sitka!” garden show event on Sunday she released the new version of the guide.

The book includes information about how to prepare your garden for Sitka’s short growing season, including how to set up your home for plants you may need to start inside. She talks about using sand and seaweed in the garden to help with drainage and fertilizer. The guide also lists many of the plants, bushes and trees the Welsh family has grown in its garden, including the specific varieties that did best in Sitka. There also are several photos from the garden.

The Welsh Family Forget-Me-Not Gardens is one of Sitka’s most productive gardens when it comes to producing food, and Florence frequently has a booth at the Sitka Farmers Market to sell her produce. The garden grows berries, fruit trees, herbs/mints, and a wide variety of vegetables. She includes some instructions with the vegetables, and the guide also includes a timeline for seed starting so you know when to plant. The guide ends with information about invasive plants, insects and slugs, and a list of useful seed catalogs and Web sites.

The homemade booklet is available for $5 a copy, and people can order copies by contacting Florence at (907) 747-8705 or florence.welsh@acsalaska.net. There are several different cover photos, but the content is the same on all the guides.

A basket of Florence Welsh's books for sale at Let's Grow Sitka!

February 2, 2010 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Local Foods Network contracting for 2010 St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm lead gardener

Darby Osborne, Doug Osborne, Kerry MacLane and Maybelle Filler pick radishes at St. Peter's Fellowship Farm before the first Sitka Farmers Market in 2008

The Sitka Local Foods Network is contracting for a lead gardener to help manage our activities at the St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm community garden this summer. St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm (SPFF) is growing, and we’re adding new garden beds so we can grow more crops. The vegetables grown at SPFF are sold at the Sitka Farmers Market to help support the efforts of the Sitka Local Foods Network, with some crops also going to local church and charity groups. Here is the lead gardener contract description.

St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm 2010 Lead Gardener Contract Description

Work Experience: 2-3 years of varied vegetable gardening experience, preferably with at least one year in Southeast Alaska. This includes planning, cultivating, harvesting, composting and preparing vegetables for sale or preservation, as well as putting the garden to rest for the season.

Contract Requirements:

Develop a garden plan that includes succession planting in conjunction with the SPFF tri-coordinators (board members Lisa Sadleir-Hart, Doug Osborne and Maybelle Filler)
Conduct soil testing and amend the soil to improve soil quality using available resources (i.e., seaweed, bone meal, etc) in conjunction with the SPFF tri-coordinators and volunteer work parties
Cultivate plant starts using seeds provided by the SLFN and make recommendations for SPFF seed start kits to be distributed at the Let’s Grow Sitka event on March 14, 2010
Use organic gardening practices
Host 3 initial planting parties (from 2-4:30 p.m. on three Saturdays, May 15, May 22 and May 29) i.e., coordinate with the SPFF tri-coordinators to plan and direct work
Direct 75 percent of the garden work parties, i.e., these are tentatively scheduled for Wednesdays 4:30-6 p.m. and Saturdays 2-3:30 p.m. (on non-Sitka Farmers Market Saturdays) during the months of June, July and August, plus the first half of September, but can be negotiated.
Plan and oversee the harvest of the garden for the first five 2010 Sitka Farmers Markets (harvest usually takes place early on market-day mornings, July 17, July 31, August 14, August 28 and September 4)
Develop a method for quantifying the amount of vegetables harvested from SPFF and implement it
Maintain the composting and watering systems
Direct any questions or concerns to the SPFF tri-coordinators

Compensation: A total of $1,500 paid in three installments (May 15, July 15 and September 15) plus 5 percent of the SPFF harvest – this compensation schedule is open for negotiation.

If interested in the SPFF lead gardener contract, e-mail a resume that includes two local references that can speak to your gardening ability and a letter of interest by February 20th to 3akharts@acsalaska.net. Direct questions to Lisa Sadleir-Hart at 747-5985 or Doug Osborne at 747-3752.

August 14, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Third Sitka Farmers Market takes place on Saturday (Aug. 15)

The third Sitka Farmers Market of the season takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15, at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall (235 Katlian St.) and in the adjoining parking lot owned by the Baranof Island Housing Authority.

“The Sitka Farmers Market offers unique varieties of fresh, nutritious food at the peak of flavor, creates a vibrant community gathering place, and provides the opportunity for learning about healthy life choices and local products,” says Linda Wilson, Sitka Farmers Market Co-Coordinator.

The Sitka Farmers Market features about 20-30 vendors each market who sell locally grown produce, locally harvested fish and locally made arts and crafts. Local musicians perform on the stage inside the ANB Hall and in the jam tent outside, local cooks make ready-to-eat dishes and there are activities for the children. The Sitka Farmers Market is the only farmers market in Southeast Alaska authorized to accept WIC vouchers, which can be used by WIC-eligible families to purchase produce.

Booths are available for Saturday’s market for $5 a table. For more information about this week’s market, contact Linda Wilson at 747-3096 (nights) or lawilson87@hotmail.com, or contact Kerry MacLane at maclanekerry@yahoo.com.

By the way, don’t forget to vote for the Sitka Farmers Market in the “Love Your Farmers Market” contest sponsored by Care2.com and LocalHarvest.org. The market with the most votes wins $5,000. To vote, just click on the contest logo below and follow the link.

August 11, 2009 by Charles Bingham

• Chena Hot Springs greenhouse a model for Sitka greenhouse project

One of the five focus areas for the Sitka Local Foods Network is to build a community greenhouse in Sitka. This will serve several functions, such as extending our growing season, allowing us to grow a wider variety of produce and expanding our capacity to grow fruits and vegetables in Sitka. The Sitka Local Foods Network has been looking at several locations around town and recently submitted a proposal for a possible site (more details as they become available).

Anyway, there is a model for a successful greenhouse here in Alaska, and it’s worth looking at so people from Sitka can see the possibilities.

Chena Hot Springs, located about 60 miles from Fairbanks, is working toward becoming a more sustainable community and an important element of this vision is being able to produce more of their own food locally. In 2004, Chena Hot Springs Resort installed a 1,000-square-foot test greenhouse that has become the only year-round producing greenhouse in Interior Alaska (click here to read more).

The hoop house greenhouse was able to maintain an interior temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit, even when outside temperatures dipped to minus-56 (the 134-degree difference is the largest ever recorded for a controlled environment facility in the U.S.). The greenhouse is heated by geothermal energy from the hot springs (165-degree water running through pipes embedded in concrete floor slabs). Click here for a downloadable report (as a PDF file) on the economic benefits of the project.

After the successful first year or two of production, Chena built a new 4,320-square-foot greenhouse to provide the resort’s restaurant with a greater variety of fresh produce on a year-round basis. Under optimal conditions the nearly 14,000 lettuce plants can grow nearly 150,000 heads of lettuce in a year. They also have 450 different tomatoes, including six Dutch varieties, a cherry tomato variety, a grape tomato variety, a beefsteak tomato variety and three intermediate cluster varieties. They also grow green beans, peppers, cucumbers and numerous greens and herbs (click here for a photo gallery). Chena Hot Springs Resort is working in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (click here for a link to the UAF AFES).

Chena Hot Springs Resort, which uses geothermal and other waste heat for power, will host the Fourth Annual Chena Renewable Energy Fair on Saturday, Aug. 22. Click here for more information.