my Arctic vegetable garden

It's -45°C outside with the windchill. We're getting about four hours of daylight, and the ocean is freezing over. What am I doing on this fine winter evening?  Tending to my vegetable garden.

It's an indoor vegetable garden, obviously, and it requires the use of our SAD lamp. We originally got the SAD lamp for us, in case we miss the sun during the winter, but it's actually been making our plants very happy. And when our plants are happy, we are happy.

So far, we've managed to grow or at least not kill tomato plants, cucumber plants, pepper plants, and green onions.  We had a morning glory plant at some point, but it died and I did not really care because you can't eat morning glories.

green onions, one week old

 

The green onions were the most impressive plants that we've grown so far. We planted the bulbs in soil, and a week later, they were fully grown and ready to harvest. We basically will never have to buy green onions again.

This is pretty cool, if you think about how hard it is to get fresh produce up here in the Arctic. Vegetables are already more expensive at the grocery stores here, and if you're looking for fresh, local and organic, you're out of luck...unless you set up an indoor vegetable garden.  We're now trying to do the same thing with bok choy, celery, and fennel.  Since the climate is very dry here in the winter, we have to water them pretty often.

Now, if we can find a way to grow our own Kraft Dinner and ramen noodles in our potting soil, we'll be set!

wind blowing in from the open Arctic tundra. The DEW line station is completely out of sight.