WATCH: A use for lavender that makes scents

• Why they can't cut lavender quickly enough
• Beware of the bees

In the hills of east Kelowna, a farm is alive with a chorus of buzzing bees and a cacophony of floral smells.

The Okanagan Lavender & Herb Farm’s crops are maturing, and founder Andrea McFadden is out in the fields tending to the harvest.

“This year’s harvest is good. The water we had this spring, the extra rain, was really good for the plants,” McFadden told Kelowna10. “We’ve been happy with our harvest; it’s going to get very fast this week with the heat coming on.”

She predicts this year’s harvest will be much more bountiful than last, where hot weather came far sooner.

“It was so hot we couldn’t cut it fast enough,” she remarked. “It just ended up drying out.”

McFadden’s lavender is usually distilled into essential oil for use in her products.

“What we’re waiting for is the oil gland in the plant to develop, under a microscope it looks like a balloon inflating,” she explained. “And when that balloon is full, we want to be cutting it for the still and getting that essential oil.”

Most of what she creates from the essential oils are beauty products, as well as sleep aids, though lavender is also used in culinary applications, such as syrups.

If you have lavender growing in your own garden, McFadden said there are a few things to look out for if you are thinking of harvesting and using it.

“This lavender here is starting to go to an amber shade, so it’s almost finished its bloom. This is the stage that we cut for essential oils. If you wanted to do sachets, you would have to do it right now.” she explained.

“You can cut it either with pruning shears, or we use sickles. When you’re pruning your lavender bush, you want to cut at the bottom of the stem, it will look like boxwood when you’re done.”

Its important to be aware of bees as well, as they are immensely attracted to lavender. She said just jostling the bush a little to get them to leave should do the trick so that no stinging occurs.

And with the Okanagan’s climate, having your own lavender bush is actually quite easy.

“It’s a semi arid climate here, lavender is happy in well drained soils with hot dry weather,” she said. “If you think about how lavender is native to the Mediterranean, south of France, the conditions here are quite similar so it’s a great spot to be growing it in Canada.”