Santa Gardener

December 22nd, 2005

   Santa Claus hits crunch time soon, as he does every Christmas Eve.

   But I got to thinking. What’s he do in the off-season?

   Then it occurred to me… I’ll bet Santa is a gardener.

   This jolly fellow who ho-ho-ho’s in the winter strikes me as the kind of guy who would hoe-hoe-hoe in the summer.

   Can’t you just picture good, ol’ Santa in jeans, work boots and a flannel shirt with red suspenders digging ‘Yukon Gold’ potatoes for the evening stew?

   I can.

   Gardening is a logical activity for someone whose job peaks in November and December – even if your average frost-free growing season is 30 days, as it is at the North Pole.

   There are clues, you know.

   For instance, Santa obviously has the universal gardener trait of sharing. He shares big-time by giving away toys to all the good little boys and girls, just as gardeners share by giving away tomatoes, zucchini and black-eyed susan divisions to all the neighborhood guys and gals.

   If we gardeners could sprout toys, we’d give them away, too.

   Then there are the plants named after Santa.

A cluster of 'Santa' grape tomatoes.

   I know of at least three: ‘Santa Claus’ hosta, a small, blue-green perennial with white leaf margins; ‘Santa Claus’ fuchsia, a deep-pink annual with little white protruding petals, and the ‘Santa’ tomato, an excellent grape-type variety that produces gobs of very sweet, crack-resistant fruits all summer.

   If Santa isn’t a plantsman, why would he be honored with not one or two but THREE plant namesakes? Not even Roger Swain or P. Allen Smith can claim that.

   What clinched it was when I did a little Internet search for other Santa/gardening connections. It turns out this guy is all over gardendom.

   There are Santa Claus garden flags, Santa Claus garden stakes, Santa Claus garden figure lights, even a Santa Claus garden gnome made by some German company.

   OK, since Santa is obviously a gardening nut, that begs the question, “Just what kind of garden does Santa have?”

   It can’t be easy growing stuff where the winter temperatures can dip below minus-50 and where frost is possible any day of the year – including the middle of July.

   According to the National Weather Service, North Pole, Alaska’s average highs are in the low 70s from June through August, and the average nighttime lows are above 40 degrees from mid-May to early September.

   Not bad.

   Not good either.

   It’s a challenging, no-tomato climate, but we’re talking about a guy who’s up to the task of stopping at every kid’s house all over the world in one 24-hour period with nothing more than a single reindeer-powered sleigh.

   If he can do that, I think he can grow a decent turnip.

   Besides, in that kind of cold weather, most bugs and diseases can’t survive. That means no Japanese beetles, no leaf blight and especially no darned gnats flying up our collective noses whenever the state doesn’t spray.

   Also on the bright side, there’s surely an ample supply of well rotted manure to work into the garden… probably a nutritious combo of reindeer and polar-bear doo-doo.

   Santa’s garden is no doubt very neat. After all, he’s got a crew of elves who are probably glad to get outside and pull some weeds after a long day of being cooped up inside the toy sweatshop.

   At first, I wasn’t sure that cookie-loving Santa would be much interested in growing vegetables, other than carrots, which are Alaska-hardy and, as we all know, a reindeer favorite.

   Potatoes, too. Santa looks like a meat-and-potatoes guy.

   Then I figured, no, I’ll bet Santa’s doctor and Mrs. Claus have been on his case about losing some weight and lowering his cholesterol. What better way to do that than by simultaneously exercising and growing your own salads and cole crops (which also happen to be high in cancer-preventing antioxidants)?

   North Pole’s climate actually supports a surprising number of veggies – mainly the ones we grow in the cool of spring and fall.

   Potatoes, beets, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, rutabagas, spinach, lettuce, kohlrabi, Swiss chard, onions, leeks, turnips, Brussels sprouts and radishes are among the crops that Santa can grow in northern Alaska’s Zone 1.

   In fact, because the sun shines day and night in a North Pole summer, some of these crops do better than here.

   Alaska gardeners are legendary for their gargantuan heads of cabbage.

   Mrs. Claus likely spends a good bit of her summer putting up jars of sauerkraut and pickled beets.

   Hmmmm. Maybe it’s not too late to revise my Christmas list to ask Santa to bring me one of those great big cabbages and a nice jar of North Pole kraut.