February In My Potager

The month of January fairly flew by with all the planning and ordering and here we are in mid February already! This month usually drags for me, tends to feels like the longest month of the year but this year it is going much faster as we have the reno going on and lots of planning to do. Thank goodness.. however, that is not gardening related so I still tend to get a wee bit of itching fingers!

Here are some of the garden ramblings going on in my head right now....

To help with that, I have been getting all my ducks in a row. Garden plans have been made up, seeds and supplies pretty much all ordered. Getting ready for spring has really helped with the itch. Jeez, that kind of sounds like a disease, haha.

Spring is less than 6 weeks away as I write this, the weather is glorious, even here on the prairies. I know there is yucky weather yet to come (snow, rain, cold, who knows what mother nature will throw at us yet), but this sunshine and warmth certainly does help lighten the winter blues.

I am always willing to play around with direct sowing and trying my hand at winter sowing. I just sow and wait for things to come up when their timing is right. The seeds just know what to do. You cannot do this with everything but you can push limits with cold hardy veggies and flowers, things like peas, sweet peas, lettuces, carrots. Back in the 90's, when I lived in the Edmonton area, I used to toss some carrot and lettuce seeds in a garden bed beside the garage in late fall, before the first snows came. It was a sunny, bright area, the snow always melted away from that bed early from the reflected heat of the white siding, everything popped up much earlier in spring. I will be plating around with this again this fall!

I found a local guy to build me a great little greenhouse to be my season extender for late tomatoes, melons, cucumbers maybe, and get an early start with hardy spring greens. It is not heated or insulated, so would not be worthwhile (dollar-wise) to heat this greenhouse till April and May, with a small heater at night, just enough to keep the chill off the warm season crops. Can also pop that heater back inside in September, if needed, to finish off those late summer veggies.

The heated she-shed greenhouse is still in the works, we hope to build it this summer, but for now is a dream in my head, a draft on paper, and a bunch of ideas on Pinterest ; )

Here are some gardening things you can do this month to keep your itching green fingers happy. I found four different calendars for when to start your seeds. I love the first one, gives you a pretty accurate timeline for most things. I just found the 4th one and I really like that one, too.

1. when to start seed - A Way To Garden

2. When to Start Seeds Indoors - Free Printable Seeding Guide (zone3vegetablegardening.com)

3. SM403_Planting_Chart_Northern_BC.pdf (shopify.com)

4. Seed-Starting Date Calculator | When to Start Seeds Indoors | Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)

The only thing I really disagree with is the peppers. Hot peppers can take a really long time to germinate and all peppers are slow growing so they can be started in February in pretty much all parts of Canada and stay in 4 inch pots till the go outside or into the greenhouse. They do not grow fast like tomatoes so go ahead and start them as soon as you want to, especially if you are growing the super hots. The hotter the pepper, the longer it usually takes to germinate. Needs bottom heat and humidity dome until germination occurs, and then bright light and cool-ish temps.

Here in central Alberta, my last frost date is May 20 to 25.

On the island, in Nanaimo, I always used April 28th as my last frost date.

How to grow peas... such good instructions from start to finish. I used to put peas and sweet peas into the ground on a nice week in February or March when in my zone 7 home, here in the zone 3 I will push that back by 4 weeks and pick a nice day in March or April. Just like the winter sown carrots, they will do nothing until the temps and daylight hours are just right. Nothing to lose by trying, eh? My favourite peas are the Tall Telephone (they grow super tall) and the short container Little Crunch peas from Renee's (in the picture above) that I use as border peas.

Just a fun tip. This is one of my most favourite things to do as it is pretty and can be hung on the patio. As soon as you start seeing strawberry plants or roots at the shops, pick them up and pot them up with some pansies, violas, alyssum, or other flowers to make the basket more colourful, feed the bees, and attract pollinators. Pop the strawberries into a garden bed in fall.

What can you start this month?

Peppers and eggplants, both take a long time to grow.

Onions and that whole allium family, if you have not already done so.

Most all perennial flowers and some annuals can be started now. Petunias, geraniums dahlias from seed.

Many herbs can be started at this time.

Celery, artichokes.

The office, my head, my planner, are all getting pretty full of gardening supplies and ideas!

Those are some of the ideas and things flitting around in my brain right now. Hope you are all getting into your happy zone with your garden ideas and dreams.

Happy Dreaming, Planning ( Sowing?)~ Tanja