Here are a few seeds you may wish to plant to help start your spring gardening season!

Purple Sprouting Broccoli:
Leave some space in your garden for these extremely cold-hardy biennial plants, which will provide very small, sweet purple flowering shoots in the spring. The tall plants are very generous with small side-shoots for many weeks. Steam or enjoy raw

Kale:
Kale is one of the finest stir-fry and salad greens! And the kale you grow through the winter will be sweet and full of vitamins, nothing like the tough hot leaves from California. It is one of the most cold hardy of the cole crops and will provide reliable and tasty winter fare anywhere on the Coast.

Red Russian Kale:
Flat, toothed, grey-green leaves with purple stems and veins that really brightens after frosts. Tender for salads, and good for bunching. The red and purple hues turn a rich dark green when cooked. Perhaps richer in vitamins and minerals than other greens and very disease resistant.

Lancinato Kale:
The most elegant vegetable you will ever see. The long dark blue-green leaves shoot from the central stem like ostrich feathers. A stunning addition to the ornamental vegetable garden, it grows 1m (3') tall with deeply blistered strap-like leaves that are frost hardy and tender eating.

Super Gourmet Salad Lettuce:
A blend of five very popular lettuce varieties in equal quantities: a butter crunch, a red leaf, a romaine and two pretty green leaf lettuces. Even as seedlings, their appearance is quite different and they can be easily thinned to your chosen proportions in the row. Sow small amounts regularly for a continuous harvest. Pretty enough for the flower garden; this is the famous 'lettuce blend'!

Oriental Greens:
Oriental greens are so easy to grow here on the West Coast; you'd think they were native plants. What's more, they handle all our temperamental seasons with such good taste!

Joi Choi:
Dark-green leaves and glowing, thick, sweet, white stalks that are mild and juicy with hardly a hint of mustard. Plant grows to 45cm (18"). Space 60cm (12") and harvest promptly. Cover with cloche if planting in very early spring, as it will bolt if seedlings are exposed to cold temperatures. In summer, plant short rows and harvest promptly before it bolts. The mature plant is somewhat cold hardy, so plant again in late summer.

Oriental Greens Blend:
A blend of five easy-to-grow favourites to add variety to your meals. Plant in early March, then again in late July/Aug for fall and winter harvest. Enjoy the leaves while small in salads; stir-fry the larger leaves. Space plants at least 20cm (8") apart.

Swiss Chard:
A dependable relative of beets, we grow this plant for its lush green leaves, which can be picked all year on the Coast. Use the leaves steamed with butter, in salads, even in lasagne in place of spinach.

Perpetual Spinach:
Not spinach, but a Swiss Chard that does not go to seed the second year. Grows 1m (3') tall and produces large dark green leaves for at least 2 years on the Coast. Great for juicing. Sow in Apr-July and leave lots of room for these plants. Pick leaves regularly from the bottom of the stem to keep the plant producing. Watch for leaf miner.

Rhubarb Swiss Chard:
The wide stalks and the veins are a deep burgundy red; the rich, dark green or purple leaves are deeply savoyed. May bolt quickly if sown too early in spring. Pretty for the flower garden, and really good to eat.

Skookum Spinach:
You'll be really impressed by Skookum's crisp, clean flavour. Erect growth habit ensures that the dark- green, semi-savoyed leaves are easily harvested in the rainy months for fall, winter and spring production.

Enjoy your early spring garden! Remember that any space, which you are not planning to replant, should be planted with a fall cover crop, this will add nutrients and reduce weeds!