Growing In A Greenhouse

pa href=http://www.squidoo.com/buildinggreenhouse target=_blankGreenhouse/a/p
pAlaska is divided into five di fferent sections which have entirely different environments. I lived in the Interior region of Alaska, in a town called North Pole, Alaska, which is about fifteen miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Interior region of Alaska extends from Denali park northward to just south of the antic circle./p
pThe environment here is very harsh in the winters, with temperatures dropping to -60 degree for several weeks out of the year and average temperature measuring between -20 and -30 for several months during the winter. With temperatures like this, the result is very short growing seasons. The growing season ordinarily starts the first week of June, when soil temperature gets above 65 degrees, and normally ends around the first of September ./p
pWith 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 around three months. Here is how I extended the growing season:/p
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li1. 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/li
li2. 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. /li
li3. The first week of June the soil temperature outside was warm enough to remove some of the plants from the greenhouse. I would put mainly the flowers, and plant them around the house. I left most of the vegetables in the greenhouse. The reason I did this is because the outdoor growing ends the last week of August and I could get an extra growing month at seasons end by using my heated a href=http://www.squidoo.com/buildinggreenhouse target=_blankGreenhouse/a./li
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pI did find that you could grow potatoes when the soil temperature is 45 degrees or greater. I would start these outside usually around the first week of April./p
pI have placed a picture of my greenhouse and a picture of a cabbage I grew in my a href=http://www.squidoo.com/buildinggreenhouse target=_blankGreenhouse/a. The cabbage is over 35 pounds!/p