“A tasty tomato is very lacking in Alaska right now”
US: New greenhouse in Alaska specializes in flowers, tomatoes
In his family run greenhouse on Hyer Road — Mid-Valley Garden and Greenhouse — he has strains from all over and with all kinds of funny names. There are big ugly ones — “chocolate stripes” and “zebra stripes” — and, at the front of the building, a plant that produces, he said, 525 grape tomatoes per plant. The fruit is so heavy he’s having trouble keeping the plant upright.
“I don’t know what to do. They’re just breaking the branches,” he said.
Oathout’s wife, Sharmin Oathout, said the business is split between tomatoes and flowers. She handles the floral end of the operation, except when she’s working at her day job as a dental hygienist.
“Next year I’ll do twice the floras as this year,” she said. It’s a part-time job on top of her full-time gig, but she’s not complaining.
“I love it. I love being in here,” she said, watering flowers.
She said the flowers pay the business’ overhead costs, helping support the experimentation her husband is doing with tomatoes.
In the course of an hour Saturday, she and her husband fielded customers looking for tomato starts, buying flowers for planting, checking out hanging baskets and eyeing their pepper plants. They’ve only been in business since mid-April, but customer traffic has been steady.
“It’s been going well,” Mark Oathout said. “Word of mouth is huge.”
Also huge is support from the agricultural community.
“The farming community in general in Alaska has been the most helpful group of any type of group you could imagine,” Mark Oathout said.
It’s interesting, he said, considering that these are the people who, in theory at least, are his competition. Even other greenhouses — people seemingly in direct competition — have been more than willing to share tips and secrets. Mark Oathout singled out Jacobson’s Greenhouse and Arthur Keyes, who owns Glacier Valley Farm, as being particularly helpful.
“These people have been forthcoming with information,’ he said. And “the community in general has been a real big asset in getting the word out.”
Mark Oathout said he worked in the produce section at Carrs/Safeway before he got into the greenhouse business. Working there, he said, helped him get to know the market. It also gave him a pretty good understanding of the type of tomatoes available in Alaska.
“A tasty tomato is very lacking in Alaska right now,” he said.
The varieties in the store, he said, have to be tailored to survive a long shipping time. They have thicker skins and are more durable.
“Many say that it is at the expense of taste,” Mark Oathout said.
So he started growing his own. He said he’s been trying to just find the perfect tomato, which he defines as a tasty tomato that can be reasonably grown in Alaska.
“I had a hobby greenhouse for about 20 years,” he said.
That greenhouse was just a 12-by-16-foot affair.
Building this new commercial hot house, he said, took about a year from clearing the land to putting up the walls and installing everything inside. He likened it to a house where, when the walls are up and the roof built, it feels like you’re almost done but in reality you’re only halfway there.
The greenhouse has its own heating system fired by wood to save money. The heating system also heats water to eliminate the need for a water heater, Sharmin Oathout explained.
And there’s a second greenhouse, the materials for which have already been delivered, she said, and is just waiting to be put up.
Source: fromtiersman.com