Freighter View Farms | Chris Izworski

The seed trays are lined up on the heat mat now, and the grow lights hum their quiet February vigil above them. It is the time of year when a gardener lives mostly in anticipation — the ground outside still locked, the calendar slowly giving ground. I find myself at the desk more than the garden these weeks, writing about what the soil will do when it thaws, and about the other work that occupies my winters.

For those who have been following along at Freighter View Farms and want to know more about the person behind the trowel and the keyboard, I have put together a fuller picture at chrisizworski.com. It is where I collect the threads of my professional life in emergency services and AI, the writing, and the gardening — all the things that do not quite fit in a single seed packet.

The Zone 6a planting schedule I built there has been particularly useful this time of year. If you are in Michigan and wondering when to start your peppers and tomatoes under lights, that guide will give you the dates. The interactive planting calendar lets you toggle between Zone 6a and 6b and see exactly what belongs on the heat mat this week versus next.

February is a month of small actions with long consequences. The pepper seeds going in today will be the plants I set out after last frost in May. The pages going up online this week will be the ones that do their slow work of building a record over months and years. There is a patience common to both — gardening and writing — that I have come to rely on.

More to come from the mat and the grow lights. The onions are next.

More from Chris Izworski:
Izworski Blog ·
GitHub Pages ·
Save Our Shoreline ·
About.me