What I’ve learned about gardening in Kodiak, Alaska: Carrots and kale thrive in our flip-flop coastal climate. Tomatoes and cucumbers thumb their noses at you. Still we try. Tomatoes though, having traveled a few thousand miles to my dinner plate, are fit to photograph; but not fit to eat. Tomatoes, as the rest of the world knows, crave warmth. So much so that an ideal temperature for these fussy plants lies between 70 and 92 degrees F. Seed Savers Exchange calls it the goldilocks zone. Too cold, say in the trenches of 32 to 50 degrees F, and tomatoes exhibit “cold stress” tantrums: leave shrivel and turn yellow; stems lose posture, and roots stop sucking up water. Oh, you want fruit to set? Forget it below 50 degrees, which happens to be a common outside […]
