What I am growing this week

A weekly series on what I am growing in my kitchen garden and on the farm

It is the last week of February and the light is definitely returning. The birds and critters are busy outside preparing for the new season. Today is the new moon and a perfect time to plant seeds. Inside, I am still in a big, cozy sweater, drinking hot tea and making garden plans and lists.

I am a lover of lists. Pen and paper. Notebooks and scraps of recycled paper. It is how I keep myself organized and how I dream and plan. The lists right now are about planting schedules, farm and garden projects, spring cleaning, and trying to finish off some house renos before spring is officially here.

On the west coast of Canada, February is a prime time to start many flowers, herbs and early vegetables. We have a heat table and lights set up in our greenhouse where we start everything that is not direct sown. I create a detailed schedule of what we start, the dates, transplant dates, succession crops, and notes. I have one pile of lists for our farm and one for my kitchen garden at home.

Our farm is on a property nearby, with landowners who help with infrastructure and design, but mostly they let us grow what we want and encourage us to grow more. It is a remarkable place and we have found that not living on our farm (as we did for many years on 5 acres), we are more intentional with our farming time and decisions.

At our home we are creating what I call a micro farm on our half acre property. We have built a greenhouse, large herb and medicinal flower garden, an annual cutting garden, and several vegetable gardens. We have also planted fruit trees and bushes, perennial vegetables and fruit, and perennial hedgerows and pollinator gardens. All of this, of course, is a work in progress, and my plans keep expanding (faster than I can build it, no doubt).

As we come into the beginning of March, this is what is on the growing schedule this week:

• eucalyptus

• celosia

• echinacea

• statice

• strawflower

It is a busy time to prepare the flowers, herbs, and medicinal plants. I simply start these multi-sown in trays, put on heat, and once seedlings have some strength I pot them up into bigger pots to keep going in the greenhouse under lights.

There is echinacea and strawflower that is likely to self-sow in my garden too. But I always start new plants to either accent what naturally comes up or to plant in a new location. We also dot the farm with different flowers to attract pollinators.

I use all of these for cut bouquets, but I also dry the strawflower, celosia, statice and eucalyptus for fall and winter creations. I dry the eucalyptus for decoration, oil infusions, and to add to dry bouquets. The echinacea is harvested for tea too! I love growing herbs and flowers that have many uses, especially at different stages or different parts of the plant.

What are you growing this week? I would love to know.

Next week we will be planting outside and I am looking forward to it. I will share with you all soon!