Having just returned from a two week vacation in Alaska, I figure it's time to provide some updates on my preliminary horticultural education efforts, and briefly muse upon my travels.

While travelling through Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage, Mat-Su, and Denali areas, I noticed a plethora of greenhouses, almost exlusvely the freestanding variety. Perhaps I've simply become more attuned to them recently, but I would swear that Alaska has the most greenhouses per capita of anywhere I've been. I was somewhat perplexed at the relative lack of lean-tos, but am speculating that they are probably not much used in the winter, when there is only a couple hours of daylight anyway. During the long days of summer at ~60 degrees latitude, the sun sweeps nearly all four points of the compass (rising/setting at +/-10 degrees or so off due North), hence the utility of having 360 degrees exposure. I also suspect some kind of local grant/subsidy program, because I saw a lot of greenhouses just being used as storage sheds.

This has gotten me thinking about how to possibly rotate my grow beds to expose different sides to the one window's worth of light. The simple solution to this is heavy duty castors, flexible hosing, and manual rotation every few weeks. However, I've also been considering how to experiment with tilting plants, ala graviponics, so am considering how to construct a system on an off-vertical rotational axis, tilted toward my light source, as a sort of clinostsat.

Back on the Front Range, it's actually turned out to be an unseasonably wet summer, so the garden did better than I expected while I was away. Unfortunately so did the lawn, of which, unfortunately, I still have entirely too much). The pole beans are starting to blossom and come in. I had planted them around a crabapple tree, which the bean vines are now climbing. I had done something similar with the other crabapple tree and my peas, which did not climb as successfully, even with the help of angled strings. I'm hoping the pole beans don't choke out the tree. I put them there hoping their nitrogen fixing properties would benefit the tree. I've mentally earmarked this tree as a host candidate for some apple graftings next spring. Since most apple trees are hybrids and have weak roots, susceptible to fungal rot they tend not to be long lived. Therefore most edible apple varieties are hybrid grafts grown on crabapple rootstock, which tends to be more resistant to root diseases.

My Chinese Pioneer Apricot tree is still struggling with the leaves turning brown. Not sure if its getting too much sun or experiencing some kind of root issue. While I don't have it on my drip irrigation system, I can't imagine that water shortage would be the issue, not with our recent rains. I'm having similar problems with my grapevine. My suspiscion is that the compost I used when planting them was not sufficiently mature. Both plants "should" be good at high altitudes.

3 of my 4 tomato varieties are also ripening now and there are a couple of jalepenos growing from a store bought plantling. The pepper seeds I planted in the spring never came up. The lettuce and carrots I planted from seed in patio planters have done well; the planters seem to be high enough to keep the rabbits out, so we've been enjoying fresh leaf lettuce all summer. The carrots are still not quite ready. The planters are about 2sf. We are pretty voracious salad eaters (especially my 5 yo). I estimate that for us it will take at least 1sf of lettuce planting per person to avoid supermarket lettuce altogether, so note-to-self: set aside 4sf of grow bed for lettuce.

I've also discovered that the dime size moringa leaves make a great addition to salad, imparting a slight peppery flavor. The moringa plant I took to work has thrived in my absence. Could be the magically green thumb of my cubicle neighbor, or just the additional nutrients finally kicking in from the fertilizer spike Iadded before vacation, or perhaps the absence of me nibbling at leaves for a couple weeks. I think one moringa tree, kept to dwarf size (no more than 3-4' high), could share root space with low lying lettuce in the aquaponics grow bed, and keep us in fresh salad year round.