For many local farmers, the growing season is almost finished on the Kenai Peninsula, and surplus produce is yet to sell.
Oblong green peppers, bulbous kohlrabi and protuberant tomatoes line the wooden table in front of Glenn Sackett’s organic vegetable stand in Sterling. For reasons unknown, his end-of-the-year yield remains unripe later into autumn than expected.
Inside the main towering greenhouse, 650 tomato plants are laden with heavy green bulbs. Dried yellowing leaves cover the vines because their water source was recently cut off.
“That’s seems to be the only way they get ripe,” Sackett said. “They are the best crop I have.”
Last year 800 tomato plants stretched from floor-to-ceiling in the larger of two greenhouses on his property. He cut competition by weeding down the number of stems stuffed into the space, and as a result, has bigger, better fruiting bodies.