Hi, I'm Heidi Rader here in the Alaska Garden.
I'm with UAF Cooperative Extension Service and Tanana Chiefs Conference.
I'm here in Homer, Alaska checking out all the cool things farmers are doing here to extend the season like
high tunnels, hoop houses, low tunnels and also the other cool tools they're using as small-scale farmers.
I'm here with Emily Garrity at Twitter Creek Gardens and we're gonna check
out her passive solar greenhouse. So, how do you maximize
the sun and heat retention with this greenhouse?
So the design of the passive solar is you want your glazing at an angle perpendicular to the shoulder
season sun, so basically spring and fall equinox.
Okay. And what do you use the greenhouse for?
So, we use it for various things at different seasons. In the
spring, we do all of our soil blocking and seed starting and then in the summer
we'll put a summer crop and in the fall we'll plant a winter crop and that's
primarily for home consumption, but we can grow spinach and kale and hearty
greens in there in the fall and then harvest them through the winter and then
do the whole cycle again, come spring.
Wow. That's great. Let's go inside and check it out.
So you've got your passive solar greenhouse kind of dug into the ground a little bit.
What aspects of the greenhouse help maximize the sun and heat retention.
So, the glazing angle like we talked about before really maximizes
the sun and the heat retention qualities of the greenhouse are both the concrete
walls - the north side being completely dug into the ground so the whole north
wall is covered in soil on the outside. And the east, west and south pony walls
are at 4-foot and they're all concrete as well. And then our raised beds full of
soil have the heat retention quality.
Okay. Because that kind of gets the plants off the floor a little bit more.
It gets the plants off of the floor. Yup, exactly.
So down at the four-foot level it tends to be a little cooler so we built the
raised beds on platforms which kind of doubled as a heat retention technique. So it worked out well.
And then you even have a second layer of plants up there.
We do. We use that just in the spring for our transplants or our seed
starting. And then all of those go out into the field and we remove the
shelving and then we're just growing our summer crop in here.
Okay then that keeps them nice and warm up there, I bet.
Yup. Full sun and nice and warm.
So, I see you have a wood stove here. Do you ever have to use this much?
Not very often, but it's really nice to have as kind of an insurance policy. So if we have a
series of cloudy days or it's really cold and we have starts out here, then we
can fire up the wood stove and it keeps the space warm, so we don't lose our tender starts.
Great. So what do you grow in here mostly like say in the spring?
So in the spring we do all of our soil blocking and our seed starting to grow
transplants to go out into the field. And then once those are out in the field in
the summer we put a crop of various warmer-loving things like hot peppers or
we grow in here - cucumbers - we've grown basil in here. Sometimes lettuce.
So, kind of a variety of summer crops.
Great. And then are you able to grow into the fall and winter at all?
We are. So, once our summer crop comes out we're able to
plant the raised beds with hearty greens or kale and we try to get them up to a
harvestable size before the sun gets too dim in the wintertime and then we can
harvest through the winter those hearty greens and if we get them in here a
little too late then in the spring as soon as we're getting into February
March and a little bit more light, then they tend to have a growth spurt and we
can harvest them really early in the spring to eat.
Nice. Well, it sounds like a really sustainable solution for Alaska.
It is. Yeah, it's really helpful and works
really well for our farm as a propagation house and kind of an extra
warm climate to grow some of those diverse vegetables.
Great. Well, thanks Emily. This has been really interesting.
Yeah, You're welcome. Thanks for having me.