Mat-Su Master Gardeners Conference is April 6

LAZY MOUNTAIN — Rows of tiny pink bicycles are in bloom in front of local shops, a sure sign spring and summer can’t be far off.

For the hardcore earth-turners among us like Mat-Su Master Gardeners Curt and Marge Mueller though, the start of Alaska’s gardening season was actually a couple of months ago.

The two have gardened in Alaska since 1973 when they lived in Anchorage and expanded their garden beds after moving to Lazy Mountain about 30 years ago.

They started sprouting this year’s crops on Jan. 1, Marge said. That’s the day they pushed tiny tomato seeds into the soil and waited for Mother Nature’s magic to send the shoots peeking up through the dirt.

While other less-able gardeners struggle year to year to get tomatoes to grow larger than peas or ripen at all, the Muellers say they expect to harvest their first tomatoes of the year by mid-May.

The trick? It’s the heated greenhouse the couple uses to grow their tomatoes, cucumbers, winter squash and peppers. The Muellers start all of the 40-some varieties of annuals, perennials and vegetables as seeds in their greenhouse grow annually.

“It doesn’t require so much skill this way,” Curt said.

It’s their heated greenhouse that allows the two longtime Valley gardeners to stretch Alaska’s gardening season from January to October.

At the Mat-Su Master Gardeners conference — focused this year on “Backyard Food Security” — keynote speaker Tim Meyers will talk about tundra farming, which pushes the limits of gardening still farther. He operates Meyer’s Farm in Bethel.

The 2013 Alaska Master Gardeners State Conference is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., April 6 at the Palmer Depot, 610 Valley Way. Registration is ongoing and costs $75 for the daylong conference.

“It’s different to make this work in Bethel,” Curt said. “These people are gardening in more difficult conditions. Techniques they use will be things we can use here.”

Curt said it’s likely many folks across Alaska have more potential for a successful garden than they may realize, recalling a hunting guide in the Colville River who was growing a garden on the North Slope, well above the Arctic Circle.

Marge said a natural gas-fired hot water heater provides the hot water that circulates through the pipes in the greenhouse and in the raised concrete platform that runs the length of the building.

Though some of this year’s seeds haven’t been planted yet, she said between now and May 1 the rest of the planting will be completed. Then the Muellers will begin moving seedlings outside to a special shelter the two use for harding-off tender new plants moving from the greenhouse to the dry, cold, windy air outside where hours of UV rays batter their delicate foliage and threaten their survival.

“Once we start putting stuff out we don’t bring it back in,” Curt said. “It’s too much work.”

Plants spend about a week in this shelter before moving out to a spot in their more than 500-square feet of raised garden beds.

Marge said those 12 raised beds provide plenty of food and work.

“I’m still eating potatoes and carrots from last summer,” she said.

She said these days she freezes her veggies instead of canning them.

Weeding and watering lasts all summer, and harvest runs until the first frost, Marge said.

She’s from Michigan and he’s from Wisconsin, where they both grew up growing things.

For her, she said, “It’s a way to provide part of our own food.” For Curt, a former farmer, gardening is in his blood.

“I’ve always grown things,” he said.

Last year, Marge entered her biggest cabbage — 49 pounds — in the Alaska State Fair. But the Muellers are not the sort of Alaska gardeners to focus on jumbo veggies. Big veggies take up precious space, she said.

“I want stuff you can eat,” Curt said.

Contact managing editor Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.

The 2013 Alaska Master Gardeners State Conference is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., April 6 at the Palmer Depot, 610 Valley Way. Registration is ongoing and costs $75.