Hydroponics provide year-round growing for Alaska farmers

On a recent December afternoon, Soldotna farmer Taylor Lewis preps for a day of harvesting crops. She walks to a tray filled with ripe lettuce and snips a head of it by the stem.

It’s just one of about 900 plants that Taylor and her mother-in-law Jayme Lewis will harvest and process this week – despite freezing temperatures and slushy snow outside. That’s because the duo works for Edgy Veggie, an indoor farm that grows produce year round.

“In the summer, a lot of our business drops off because folks are gardening at home. But in the winter, they’re not, because it costs money to heat your greenhouse,” Jayme said. “It costs a lot of money to heat your greenhouse.”

The company is a hydroponic farm, meaning they grow plants without soil. Hydroponic systems recycle and reuse nutrient-filled water, which minimizes waste. Specially made lighting and climate controlled conditions make it possible for Edgy Veggie to grow indoors during the winter months.

Around Thanksgiving, the company harvested 150 pounds of lettuce, enough to make about 800 salads. That took two days and was one of their biggest hauls of the year. Although not a typical harvest for the company, Jayme says she does see an uptick in business during the winter when Alaska’s produce is almost exclusively shipped up from the Lower 48.

“If you go to the grocery store and pick up a head of lettuce right now, by the time you get it home it will be wilted,” Jayme said. “That’s sad. Literally, that’s sad.”

Jayme says some local restaurants have sourced their vegetables from Edgy Veggie because they last longer and are fresher than grocery store produce.

Nestled between two train cars-turned-restaurants on the other side of town, Henry Krull walks inside his shipping container farm. He points to a wall that’s growing hundreds of bunches of butter lettuce.

Krull is the owner of fresh365, another Kenai Peninsula based hydroponic farm. Just like Edgy Veggie, the farm operates entirely indoors.

“The advantage of growing indoors, in a container like we have, is that we can control the environment,” Krull said. “We can grow no matter what’s going on outside. It can be 30 below outside, but it’s always 70 degrees or so inside.”

fresh365 also sees an uptick in direct-to-consumer sales in the winter. Otherwise, most of their sales go to other businesses, like local restaurants.

And while indoor farming means fresh, local produce year-round for Alaskans, it faces a number of challenges. Krull says growing in a hydroponic setting is much more expensive than traditional farming methods. So, to offset his farm’s energy costs, he installed solar panels, which were partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP.

But, Krull says the property doesn’t get much sunlight in the winter.

“The sun is a very valuable commodity, it’s valuable for not only producing electricity, but it helps to lower the energy costs,” he said. “And the energy costs of the farm containers we have is actually very, very high, because we can’t take advantage of the sun.”

Edgy Veggie, on the other hand, doesn’t even have solar panels. Jayme says their energy costs are high year round.

“Electricity, especially, is outrageous,” she said. “I wish that the state had some sort of option with the electric companies to help support farming. We’re providing a service to the community, honestly. We’re trying to, but it might run us out of business.”

Other challenges to hydroponics include faulty pumps and timers, ventilation issues and water leaks. Like traditional farming, hydroponic farmers say it’s backbreaking work.

But, for farmers like Taylor Lewis, offering fresh and local produce year round is a labor of love.

“Being able to supply our community with anything fresh is great,” Taylor said. “What we have as options in the grocery store – it’s not cutting it.”

“These belong in every community,” Krull said. “We’ve been able to prove that as a business model, it works. You can make a profit doing it, you can provide a good service to your community, and I think we can really do good for our community by providing something that is not readily available on a year-round basis.”

According to the U.S Department of Agriculture, only 5% of food Alaskans consume is grown locally. The state also has very short growing seasons.