Why didn't I think of that? Wintersowing tips

It was 32F here this morning. I am leaving my jugs and flats in the cold frame which was 29F!! but not hit with the frost covering the yard. The higher temp is from an outdoor thermometer that has a wireless reader in the house. It sits on the front porch so I think get some heat from the building. On the other hand the bottom of the pond was 46F. Fish are happier.

I FINALLY saw a few tiny Penstemon seedlings emerge from some WS pots in tubs.
I had given up all hope for Penstemon this year!

I guess the warmer weather, translucent lids, plus full sun on the tubs, getting it all steamy inside, is GOOD for some seeds. But I may cut the vent holes bigger.

Corey

Since mine are in a 24"x48" cold frame (metal shell with plastic cover) it has these nice little zipper vents on top. It gets over 100 on a clear sunny day and they are on the east side of the house on my deck. I have had to pop the entire tops some days. But was only 29F in there this morning again...

Ive not seen my penstamons yet either,The Phoenix Magenta I planted last yr Is dead.... =( it was soo pretty...booohoo

I have to dig in a LOT of sand here to get penstemons to survive our clay.

oh it was planted in amended soil,very well draining ,but very exposed to the west winter wind.Im thinking that was it.. =( maybe ?

I haven't given up on my penstemon. Plants on a slope, well drained, facing a westerly wind BUT covered in snow for months.

My ambition was first top get them to germinate. Success!

If some survive long enough to get into the ground alive, I'll be delerious.;

If any survive the slugs long enoguh to flower, I'll be flabbergasted.

Come back next year? You guys have high expectations and/or green thumbs.

I'm still learning, and every day is an adventure.

Corey

Cory, you crack me up. You are also much more ambitious. I bought small plants so I rather short-cutted (hmm, not a word?) your process. but I would think that if you can germinate, plant, and repel slugs, your plants would be better suited to survive your winter. They would he 'home grown' so to speak. Which I think is the whole idea behind winter sowing. This was my first year (which I may have mentioned) and I made about every mistake you can make, plus a few I thought up on my own. heavy sigh. Making plans for corrective action this fall.

>> This was my first year (which I may have mentioned) and I made about every mistake you can make, plus a few I thought up on my own. heavy sigh.

That sounds like a challenge! "My mistakes are bigger than YOUR mistakes!" (If only you knew what a huge boast that was!)

We should start a forum, or at least a thread somewhere, to see who has made more and bigger mistakes than anyone else. Do beginners have an advatage in such a competition because we dunno nuttin' yet?

Or do long-timer gardeners have an edge becuase they have been making mistakes for YEARS and have had time to cover ALL the bases?

Someone consoled me that "real gardeners" have all killed lots of plants because they keep trying new things and pushing the envelope.

I'm not sure if I want to start from seed mainly because I'm cheap, stubburn, like a challenge, or all of the above. After I spent three years and got ONE Delphinium out of it, I started looking wistfully at potted Delphs at Home Depot and Lowes ... but that would be like admitting defeat!

I was also trying the think of how to word some thread topic like "Where did YOU learn to garden?" I've noticed that almost everyone has their own way, and wonder if we each just have random preferences, or if they are inherited, or actually best-practice for our local regions.

Or perhaps gardening and cultivating the soil is like a Rorschach test, and how we grow plants reveals a lot about our deepest psychological quirks.

- Some of us love to re-use plastic discards.
- Almost everyone salivates at the thought of piles of manure.
- When I foolishly boasted about having a "seed box", I learned that quite a few people have seed drawers, seed closets and even a whole seed ROOM!
- Some people have ziplocks and scissors with them at all times, and will scale walls and raid churches for a mature seedhead or cutting.
- The Dumpster Diving Divas (all praise to the D.D.D. brigade!) would go shoulder-deep into dumpsters to rescue a potted plant.
- Some people plan with graph paper and calendars! I wing it.

What does it mean, Mr. Natural?

I am guessing that "vegetable people" tended to learn as kids, from parents, and "flower people" are more likely to have picked it up by trial, error, books and Internet. Just a theory.

In my case, Mom did all the gardening, from annuals and roses to veggies. My job was only turning the soil, weeding, mowing, composting and burning leaves (sigh! I wish I knew then, to compost them!) So now, when confronted with a seed or bulb, I literally don't know which end is up. Dad had a special garden task. He would come home late from work and commuting, then take his martini with him to gaze over the garden and pronounce it Good. The Lord Of The Manor. I think we should all remember to take time to perform that important function: appreciation.

Corey

I think you made a bunch of good points. I can't grow vegies and my Dad didn't grow flowers, only vegies. And I am not a planner, I just dive in and do it (in spite of being a retired accountant and controller). With predictable failures. Like you, I hate to admit defeat ($650 worth of dead bearded iris and three years of rot attest to that fact). But I keep trying. My Dad is long gone and we never really overlapped in our gardening so I couldn't get any hints from him. As for Mother -- my first garden was a little 6x8' plot with among other things gladiolas. That was 50 years ago. I was so proud of how my stuff grew; my glads were beautiful. Came home one day and they were all gone. My Mother had cut them all and put them in a vase on her table. I doubt I need to explain how this affected me. MY flowers. MY one shining moment -- gone.

Drat Corey. You wax too philosophical. And you do it quite well. yet another heavy sigh

>> my first garden ... I was so proud
>> Came home one day and they were all gone.
>> My Mother had cut them all and put them in a vase on her table

Yikes - I forgot that gardening could be traumatic. Not very respectful of your "turf"!

One of the biggest arguments (more like a browbeating) I had from my DSO occured after I joked that I would "someday" forgive a guest of hers for pulling a tall, fancy, decorative weed by my driveway that I had been admiring and watching thrive and start to flower. (She and I lived separately and it was MY yard.)

It turned out that she (my Significant Other) had pulled that pretty weed, and was QUITE sure that I should THANK her for that and that if I DIDN'T it was MY fault and NOT hers ... on and on at some length. I was (apparently) very guilty for objecting at all, and then REALLY guilty for not promptly apologizing for objecting.

Gee, if I had known that SHE had killed my favorite plant in that yard (too small and temporary for a garden), I would have KNOWN better than to complain about it!

But not as traumatic as your story.

Corey

Umm, I would have to vote for you. If she thought it was a weed, well, okay. But it wasn't , it was meaningful to you, and as such might not require an apology for the pulling but certainly required an apology for the hurt her 'innocent' action caused. She was the proximate cause of your unhappiness and therefore should have focused on your disappointment, not on winning the 'who's wrong' argument. Ahem. Get a grip Mary. Traumatic, maybe not. Vastly unhappy making (understandably so) YES!

Keep your hands off if you don't know what you are doing and it ISN'T YOURS!!!

okay. i'm alright. i have said my piece on behalf of gardeners everywhere.

:)

I kind of suspected that wanting NOT to be seen as the transgressor was her motivation for accusing me of whatever my sin was. Viewed in just the right light, kind of like an apology!

Like "I wouldn't ever destroy even a weed that you treasured if I knew you wanted to keep it ... so it's YOUR fault!"

She just didn't stress that first part, since I should already know it,
and perhaps had to stress the second part, since I didn't pick up on it right away.

And we had a history of her urging me to kill any weeds that neighbors might object to.

(I should emphasize that 99.999% of the time, she's the most scrupulous person with the highest integrity I've ever known. And she puts up with a lot of unreasonableness from me, I'm sure. So why do I tell the "exception" story? I don't know. Maybe becuase she just left on a trip and I won't see her for a while.)

I'm still learning about how to do relationships: after all, I'm only 58.

Corey

Rick, since you mentioned Delphiniums- I had bought a pack of seeds last year and put them in my fridge to chill for awhile- forgot all about them and found them about a month ago- planted them and here's what I got! They are Pacific Giants- pretty little seedlings.

A mere child.

I Deno- d penstemon Husker Red, left in in the frig for 40 days, and lo and behold, they sprouted. Happily, I tenderly placed each seed in its own cell, watered, cooed and prepared to wait for the next sign of life. The VERY NEXT DAY when I was out my DSO called and said, "You'd better come home right away!" The 3-tiered shelf complete with lights I'd rigged up on the city windowsill had FALLEN OVER!!!! Flipped over the table in front of it and landed on the floor. Poor man tried to clean up but thankfully realized I might like to edit the wreckage before he got too far along.

Luckily some of the more advanced seedlings had been taken to the country just the weekend before, and many babies stuck to their soil, so all was not lost. But my penstemon and heuchera, barely sprouted seeds, were spilled out of the cells into one mess. After I finished cleaning up the worst of it, I carefully scooped up what may or may not have been the remains of my patient efforts and stuck it in one container. This was a month ago.

Meanwhile I read somewhere that Husker Red is hybrid, not true from seed, so I ordered a plant. Today, for the first time, I can identify the 6 mystery sprouts as penstemon 5, heuchera 1.

Tragedy....or victory?!

Pam

Pam,

>> The 3-tiered shelf complete with lights I'd rigged up on the city windowsill had FALLEN OVER!!!! Flipped over the table in front of it and landed on the floor.

>> Tragedy...or victory?!

Triumph in adversity! I'm impressed by the rescue technique. Next someone will say "I found a few cells left after the cat ate my seedlings and put them into Tissue Culture, and only 3 months later, I have a plant (or 500 plants).

It was surely a victory for your DSO that you didn't blame him for it. On the other hand, did your compost heap mysteriously double in size later that night? ;-)

I've been thinking of trying the Deno method for penstemons this summer, but first I'll see if any others emerge from their WS hibernation. It's good news to me that they sprouted In your fridge, since the outdoors still seem cool or cold at night.

Corey

JoParrott,

Pacific Giants were my first Delphiniums ... or at least, the fiorst and only variety that had a survivor. I like the artsy seedling leaf shape, but so do slugs. They LOVE them!

This year I put out a lot of beer saucers and have only seen a few slugs per day instead of armies of them.

>> I had bought a pack of seeds last year and put them in my fridge to chill for awhile- forgot all about them and found them about a month ago- planted them and here's what I got!

I think that refridgerators are pretty humid environements, especially the vegetable crisper drawer, which INCREASES humidity. If those PG delphs sprouted becuase cold mosit stratification broke their dormancy, the fridge must be pretty humid.

On the other hand, some seeds that "need stratification" sprouted for me before I knew that "stratification" was not just a misspelling of seed startification, as in "starting seeds".

I've been told that yes, there's always a percentage of seeds that are "easy", and cold-moist-strat just increases the % and speed of gemrination. Also, some species lose their dormancy as they age. So they say.

But I decided not to store seeds in the fridge unless they were delicate, or I wanted to keep them for many years. I store them in screw-lid plastic jars with dessicant inside (silica gel). And I fiddle, trying to be sure that I don't dry them out TOO much.

I like to fiddle.

Corey

Corey said: On the other hand, some seeds that "need stratification" sprouted for me before I knew that "stratification" was not just a misspelling of seed startification, as in "starting seeds".

I just howled when I read that. I thought it meant you were supposed to nick or cut the seeds. Have you ever tried to nick a snapdragon seed!! Can't be done and if it could you wouldn't have any fingers left.

Thank you! As always, when I manage a good joke, "it just came out of my fingers". I wish I could make up things like that!

Corey

Rick, I ordered some Sluggo Plus online after reading that it will kill pillbugs- It's expensive, but I fight slugs & rolypolys all summer!

'did your compost mysteriously double in the night?' Very funny, Corey. But isn't more compost always a good thing? LOL. Maybe I should have said my few survivors were Phoenix rising from the ashes.

Startification-- brilliant! Makes perfect sense to me.

And the cat that eats seedlings belongs to someone on a different thread. She only WS's now because of it.

Mstella-- ouch!!!

Pam, I would have howled had my tables 'turned' as yours did. I can only imagine the pain of seeing all your wonderful work upended on the floor. Hope there were many many survivors. I WS'd some poppies in too shallow a container and they were drying up too fast. All sown together and couldn't figure out how to get them out without just scrambling them, so I got a wide rectangular spatula and divided them like cutting a cake, then scooped them up and placed them gently on a pot I had prepared with deep damp soil. Voila! I spritzed them to try to direct their roots downward. I don't have but those few from seeds that got rolled when the wind took my containers and played nine pins in the back yard. Combat gardening at its finest.

Very similar feelings, I'm sure. I read about your tumbled tots before mine toppled. Terrible!

I couldn't even write about it at the time in the gardening journal I'm attempting to keep. DSO felt so sorry for me, I had to put a good face on it at the time. I had really pushed the envelope on balance and weight. I had just re-arranged things yet again to make more room. I had trays going front to back on the shelves, sticking out in front several inches, with a couple of heavy hanging-type pots of petunias just starting to bloom on the top shelf. He was sitting there at the other end of the table with the paper having his second cup of coffee, and nearly had a heart attack when the thing crashed down.

But gardening where you do is enough of a challenge without the other tribulations.

So how are your poppies doing now? I guess I shouldn't worry about transplanting mine if you got away with that!

I had not heard Husker Red is a Hybrid... i have my doubts....

I grew it by seed back in 07 i think... all the lil volunteers that pop up [all over] look identical to the 'mother' plant. I've resorted to dead heading to keep the babies at bay... though i still find them in the oddest places. even though they are one of my favorite plants.

I must have mis-read. Anyway, my plant will bloom this year, and the babies can take their time.. But now I'm confused about something else: if it so readily self-sows, why are the instructions for germination so complicated? Several sites list the requirements for Husker Red separate from other penstemons, so I got the impression that it was finicky. Not so?

Pam

I have not seen that to be the case. I've never had issues with it. they WS just fine - i've always done mine early, like Jan/Feb, so if they need cold strat, they get it. ... and self sow freely. 2nd yr bloomers though.... but worth the wait.

Pam, the poppies I just moved by spatula are alive but too soon to tell if they will take off. the others I salvaged and hos'd are doing very well. I know if I can get even one or two plants I will be up to my ears in seed. They are amazingly forgiving and have a great desire to thrive despite my ignorance.

I can surely identify with your balancing act on the shelves. I had a piece of pegboard laying across a 5 gallon bucket on one end and a sterlite box with water in it (left in the garage after I pulled the pumps back to the pond -- the pumps can't be let to get dry seals) being a couple of inches too short. I watched the balance very carefully expecting any day to place that one pot too many or too heavy in the wrong spot. I pulled it all apart yesterday, got better supports and redistributed. But I am maxed out for space. I look each morning in dread of damp off. I have lost one or two babies with three true leaves but I refuse to admit it is damp off. Was thinking I might spray with a fungicide as a damp off preventative. Might work. From here to May 30 is a race against -- well, trying to grow in a garage under conditions that are not very good for plants.

This is just a theory. Maybe "self-sowing" is easier than starting indoors because only 1/10th of 1% of the seeds need to live to "re-sow freely".

If you Deno'd every single seed that fell off every plant in your gardden, you could have a very poor germination RATE and still have hundreds or thousands of seedlings - or hundreds OF thousands.

Or maybe it helps them to undergo months and months of stratification, and some sprout in the fall and some in the spring, and some 2, 3 or 4 years later.

Just guessing.

Corey

Do you use peroxide in the water for your plants? That pretty much eliminated damp off for me. I use self watering trays, so it's always a strong possibility. I found this link on anotner thread on DG:

http://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com/peroxide-garden.html

.

Thanks for that link! The distinction between 3% and 35% H2O2 is not always made by people suggesting how much to add! (Oh, well, what's a factor of ten between friends?)

I haven't used it yet because I don't have a bottle.

For preventing damping off, I did find a big difference between soggy, wet, peat-based commercial seedling mixes, and fast-draining pine-bark-and-grit seedling mixes.

Corey