"Boxwood" wrote:

Out of curiousity, among those who are the more experienced gardeners,
where, would you say, in the United States, will you find the place
that as, overall, the longest growing season and the best soil? (For
what we used to call "truck" gardening - vegetables, fruit trees and
flowers).

I'm thinking the southern United States somewhere, but I don't know.

Actually, contrary to conventional wisdom, it is the Matanuska Valley in
Alaska near Palmer. The reason being that they have a short summer, but
the sun shines 24-hours a day during this short summer. They pride
themselves in the huge vegetable and flowers they can grow, some of the
largest in the world.

The University of Alaska has a campus there and the University of Alaska
has an agricultural and forestry experiment station there. The valley is
renowned for the annual Alaska State Fair, where local farmers produce
award winning vegetables. Best known are the incredibly large vegetables
grown in the almost constant summer sunlight, including 75 pound
cabbages, ten pound onions and 125 pound pumpkins.

Check out:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../MNGANDJFVM1.D
TL

--
Pardon my spam deterrent; send email to
Cheers, Steve Henning in Reading, PA USA
http://home.earthlink.net/~rhodyman