Fresh Produce in the Arctic
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 06.21.07
Talk about food miles; in Iqaluit, everything is flown in or canned. The town runs on diesel fuel and Nunavut is the largest emmitter of greenhouse gases per capita in Canada, possibly the world. The vegetables are old and tired by the time they get there.
Now the town of 7,000 has a community greenhouse and citizens are setting up boxes to grow vegetables. "It's kind of hard to imagine right now," says Mr. Lamb, the group's president, "but we hope by the end of the season, and our first harvest party, people will think it's kind of a neat thing."
It sounds like a greenhouse on Mars. According to Sara Minogue in the Globe and Mail, The biggest challenge is moderating Iqaluit's extremes of hot and cold, and light and dark. To keep his plants alive during the brief but cold summer nights, he's set up a passive solar system. That is, about 20 plastic garbage cans filled with water. In the daytime, the water heats up, and in the evening, the heat dissipates to warm nearby plants. Later on, he hopes to install a curtain system, to block out sunlight for part of the day. ::Globe and Mail
May I suggest alfalfa sprouts? They require water, but not a lot of sun, and they grow like mad. A sprout has almost as much vitamin as a grown plant, just not the calories. I guess you have to truck the seeds in, but you might be able to grow seed stock in the arctic summer.
He should check out the double walled greenhouses filled with soap bubbles. Designed in Ontario, they provide adjustable shade and insulation.