I have always insisted that you cannot be a real Alaska gardener unless you start some plants from seed. I suppose I could also opine that you are not a real chef until you cook something from your own garden. Either way, there are plenty of vegetables that can make you both a gardener and a chef.
You know it is coming: Choose the right seeds to start and they will practically grow by themselves. It's true. With some seeds, all you have to do is cover them with soil and make sure the soil doesn't totally dry out. After that, it is pretty much watch them grow and then harvest.
Let's start with radishes. The one problem with growing these from seed is that they are much too easy. Newbies plant the entire package all at once and end up with 150 radishes ripening on the same day. The trick is to plant a dozen every five or six days so they don't all ripen at once and your family won't learn to hate them.
Radishes are used to help decorate and add a pungent taste to any salad. To increase interest in eating your crop, try something other than the traditional red and white colors. There are black radishes, yellow ones and even purple varieties. You can find round, cylindrical, big and small kinds and many that sport beautiful, varied-colored patterns.
A close relative to the radish is the kohlrabi. It is round and forms its bulb above ground. Kohlrabi grow to softball size from seed under our growing conditions, but they really need to be harvested when they are the size of a tennis ball. Because they do so well here, they were popular with the pioneer gardeners and are usually a treat for Outside visitors.
Kohlrabi can be started about six weeks before things are transplanted outdoors for an early, first harvest and then a second crop can be grown from seed planted directly in the garden. Local nurseries and seed racks have lots of varieties of kohlrabi seed.
Some would say you shouldn't grow radish or kohlrabi without growing lettuce for the rest of the salad. Easy? Consider that yours will be on your table only three weeks after planting. Don't have a garden? You can grow loose leaf lettuces in containers on the deck.
There are almost too many leaf lettuce varieties to plant. They will all do well. In fact, one of the best ways to grow these seeds is in a mix. Toss a few packets together and plant, barely covering seed. And there is an added bonus: clip your produce with a scissors and new leaves will grow back.
OK, kale may be all the rage on the health food front, but it has been an easily grown vegetable in Alaska gardens for years. It can really take the cold and even tastes better when it has had a few frosts, though our cool nights mean that it will taste good all season long.
Since they have been so popular over the years, you will find a good variety of kale seeds available locally. Don't forget that these are not only for eating. Kale can make a terrific landscape plant, too. Just eat it at the end of the season when you clean up the yard.
Last -- but by no means least -- on the "easy list" are sugar snap peas. These delicious peas have an edible pod, which is never tastier than when picked and eaten right from the vine. And they grow better here than any place I know.
Snap peas grow quickly, and you should provide them with a bit of support to grow on -- a stick, a string, net or wire (nothing complicated), whether that be in a container on the deck or out in a garden bed. There are lots of varieties and all will do very well. Do look for Super Sugar Snap and Sugar Ann, which are improvements on the original variety.
There are lots of other easy seeds, that is for sure. The key thing is to choose a few and give growing plants from seed a try. It will make you a Real Alaska Gardener.
Jeff Lowenfels is co-author of "Teaming With Microbes" and author of "Teaming With Nutrients."
This story appeared in the March 2015 issue of 61º North Magazine. Contact 61º editor Jamie Gonzales at jgonzales@alaskadispatch.com.