Grower News

Kenneth John Gill aka Gillfoto By John Creed

No one knows whether Alaska’s flourishing peony industry might keep booming or go bust this year.

“Who knows how long this is going to last?” asks Pat Holloway, University of Alaska Fairbanks horticulture professor emerita, referring to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The growers I know and see around Fairbanks are still preparing to do their usual set-ups,” said Holloway, who was instrumental in incubating the industry nearly 20 years ago and has been helping to nurture it to maturity with advice and research support ever since along with other UA workers around Alaska.

In May, growers keep busy irrigating and fertilizing and otherwise preparing for the process that typically sees blooms ready by about the end of June, give or take a week or two, depending on location, Holloway said.

Last year’s hot weather across Alaska, however, bloomed most peonies prematurely, which hurt some farmers but not so much ones with cooling chambers who could still cut and store for later export.

Today Alaska boasts dozens of peony farms from interior Alaska to the Mat-Su Valley down the Kenai Peninsula all the way to Homer, with other, smaller operations scattered in pockets around the state.

“In years past, the Kenai Peninsula would always come on much later because its summers are cooler than the Interior,” Holloway said, but the 2019 summer roasted and smoked Alaska and thrust growing schedules askew, with most of the harvest maturing simultaneously. But last year, at least a reliable out-of-state peony market still existed. Not so dependable this year.

Peonies are big and round and almost universally irresistible to flower lovers. The blooms can grow up to softball size, sweet sensations of sensory seduction. Peonies also travel well enough to venture thousands of miles to faraway gala events in the Lower 48 and Canada. In fact, in recent years some Alaska peony farmers have even been cultivating markets in Great Britain and beyond. Alaska Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. Brides so love peonies they are willing to import scads of them from Alaska to spruce up Lower 48 weddings from June through September when this cold-weather flower really cannot grow anywhere else in the world but Alaska; thus, the Far North’s unique market advantage.

But what if social distancing measures stubbornly remain in force around the nation and the world as health officials work to contain this pandemic? “The issue this year is will it be feast or famine, and we don’t know which,” said Ron Illingworth, a University of Alaska professor emeritus, immediate past president of the Alaska Peony Growers Association and the state’s earliest commercial grower of the exotic blooms that have been putting a modest but often nice enough chunk of change into many Alaskans’ entrepreneurial pockets for a few years now.

“Events, weddings, and so forth, may well start up again,” Illingworth said. “If they start up again in July and August, fine. If it’s September or October, that’s not going to help.”

David Russell owns and operates one of interior Alaska’s largest […]

Source: Will Covid-19 mean feast or famine for Alaska’s peony growers?