Decades of work trying to develop a hardy, tasty, beautiful tomato that can be reliably grown outdoors in Alaska's short growing season is paying off for the Oathout family, who run MidValley Garden and Greenhouse on 18 acres near the intersection of Parks Highway and Hyer Road outside Wasilla.
Details are still under wraps, but the Oathouts are in talks with a major seed-producing company that is testing their Mat-Su Express tomato seeds, to see if the good results Alaska growers have seen so far can be reproduced reliably. If all goes well when the seeds are tested in the spring, the hardy tomato variety could be marketed across the world.
"This is all I can talk about right now," wrote Mark Oathout on the company's Facebook page in mid-September. The Oathouts—Mark and Sharmin, along with their son Kyle and daughter Melissa Lytwyn— have been running MidValley Garden and Greenhouse since 2013, but their green thumbs have been working for much longer. Sharmin says her husband has been breeding and crossing varieties of tomatoes for forty years, trying to develop the best, tastiest, and most reliable Alaska-hardy tomato possible.
Regular customers at MidValley know the vegetable starts they sell each spring are chosen for reliability and Alaska hardiness. They're all crops the Oathouts have grown themselves—and, as Melissa Lytwyn, MidValley's production manager, points out, they or greenhouse staff will share exactly what methods make each variety grow well–whether that's enormous shallots, prolific broccoli, or glowing, beautiful tomatoes.
Read more at Alaska Business
