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The dream of the 10-pound tomato

Patrick White's high tunnels here this summer seemed more like a mad scientist's lair than a home veggie patch. The sound of bubbling carried over the metallic whir of fans. Daylight filtering through the plastic shell took on an industrial hue. The air was thick with the concentrated smell of growth, as if a salad bar had been put in a stockpot to simmer.

Everywhere you turned were White's experiments. Stalks of short, fast-growing, double-eared sweet corn — yes, sweet corn in Alaska — with a modified genome to better suit a colder climate. Honeycrisp apple trees. Bushel gourdes plumping like water balloons. Long gourdes stretching 5 feet and still growing. Leafy tentacles of robust berry branches.

"Everybody knows you can't grow blackberries in Alaska, but I'm going to grow blackberries," said White, lifting a thriving branch. "The ones I grew in Idaho were bigger than your thumb — they're huge. They're really a Southern crop but they're doing fine."

Most of the growing space is taken up by more than 14 varieties of tomatoes, from bite-sized grapes and rotund cherries to softball-sized beefsteaks and bigger. Much bigger.

Read more at Alaska Dispatch News
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