an embarrassing admission

So I'm pretty much a novice gardener. I really started doing it seriously last year, and have been reading voraciously since then, mostly about native plants, botany, and ecology - theoretical, not practical stuff. So there are some basic things I realize I still don't know yet. I've done all my gardening outdoors and have never grown plants indoors or started plants from seed before now, so potting mix & its uses have really never been on my radar screen.

I winter sowed everything in topsoil.

I just realized how bad this was today, so I went out and cut lots of strips in my containers for additional drainage and popped all the tops to get some wind to help with drying (no seedlings are up yet). Fortunately, none of them are yet total sludge, but a few of them are probably moister than they ought to be. I think I'm willing to risk the birds & squirrels getting at the seeds if it can help prevent root rot & the other problems I should expect with saturated soil. Maybe this should be stressed more in the WS guides for true gardening newbies: use soil-less potting mix only! :)

J ... you can add that for your "Lessons Learned" for next year.

Do you have enough drain holes in the bottom of your containers? [oh, i see you added more]
maybe get them in the sun to aid in drying out too.

Hopefully all will be fine.

They all are on a deck that gets sun most of the day, so that's good. I put long slits down the sides of all the milk cartons, every three inches. I hope that's enough, but if we get a good rain, I'm going to have to put them in the shed or something.

I didn't read that you needed to use seed starting soil, I used mushroom compost, so mine are no good either? It is still snowing here so no germination yet anyway.
Kathy

Here is a discussion of what soil others used that worked-or didn't.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/813723/
Good luck with your seedlings.
Bev

The biggest problem with using material other than potting mix is probably issues like adequate drainage, evaporation, etc. Whether it works well is probably largely dependent on factors that affect these issues. Many of these you can adapt some, like adding more holes for drainage or evaporation, but some you can't. This includes weather realated issues like temperature, amount of rainfall or sunshine, etc.

Most any reliable garden source I've seen recommends always using potting mix in any container planting. I think soil or compost might work OK, but germination and growth might be lower than with potting mix.

At this point, you just wait and see what happens. But I recommend that you do some research on container planting, too, and see what you find. I've never used soil in any planter but have considered adding it to container mix to see if it helps in moisture retention in my summer flower containers, but I always chicken out. Not sure what my clay soil might do when added to peat. When my soil is wet it's like sticky muck, when dry it can get like a rock.

Karen

Thank you Karen, I will go make sure there are plenty of holes for drainage, ugh, I will be sick if all of that work was for nothing, lol!! Oh well, live and learn huh?
Kathy

That's it. Live and learn. Long time ago, someone gave me a begonia and I'd never actually grown a plant, so when she said use plant fertilizer, I did. Bought a bottle , put it on full strength. YOu could almost hear the poor little thing screaming in pain. Soooo, I learned real fast.!!!

At this point I think it might be better if I simply emptied out the containers with topsoil and direct sowed the seeds, which should be plenty stratified by now. At least they would get proper drainage that way. We had lots of rain 2 days ago and the containers with top soil are still dense & mucky. I don't see how any oxygen could get to young roots in them. At least with direct sowing, there might be a chance that some of the seeds will germinate. What do you guys think?

I think your direct sowing idea would work, but because direct sowing doesn't provide the protection and control that winter sowing does, you would mostly likely end up with far fewer seedlings. -Maybe instead you could consider preparing some new containers with potting mix and then transferring the top inch layer of top soil in your old containers to the new ones.

Good idea, Susan. I'll give that a try. Now to hunt down some more containers... ;)

I just came in from checking on all of my winter sow pots, I have been concerned since I sowed all of the seeds in mushroom compost not seed starter. I HAVE BABIES!!!!!!! yipppeeeee It has been in the 50's here for the last 2 days and that's all they needed ::pop::
So don't be dismayed, yours might be fine also.
Kathy

Good news! As for mine, we'll have to see... No sprouts yet! I'm not too surprised, though - they're all native perennials, which I understand can be very fussy.

This message was edited Apr 1, 2008 9:29 AM

Kathy, I'm jealous! I'm in 5a, and so far, nothing! All in good time, I guess.

Booker

Jsorens, I hope your WSing is still successful! If you decide to transfer to different containers, you don't need all new ones... as you move seeds from a container and dump the soil (toss it into a particular corner of the garden bed so that if any escaped seeds germinate you'll know they're from your containers), just fill the container with potting mix and add the seeds from another container..

Good luck!

Thanks, Jill - I ended up direct sowing one particularly waterlogged container, but for the others I carefully (but perhaps not carefully enough) lifted the top layer of soil and inserted a layer of sphagnum below. I then left them uncovered - no problems with critters so far, although the rain does splash around the soil a bit. Yesterday I checked the containers, and 2 of them had tiny orange-green stems just poking out of the soil. No leaves yet, but a promising start!

Good! Obviously seeds grow just fine "naturally" in topsoil, but topsoil in containers just compacts so quickly... your sphagnum should help. Once you get something going, you can always up-pot little clumps of seedlings into pots with potting mix and let them grow on a bit before planting them out if you like. Some folks plant out HOS (hunks 'o seedlings) at very tiny stages, but I have better luck keeping them where I can keep a closer eye on them until they grow a bit larger. I think the topsoil may become more of a problem later on because it'll start compacting and also possibly drying out (like a brick) when temps rise.

That makes sense - planting out early then seems like the best strategy for the topsoil containers.

Yep. Do you have a "nursery bed" for your little seedlings, or are they going to have to fend for themselves out in the "wild blue yonder?"

my "nursery beds" often turn into flower beds because I'm too slow at moving them, heehee.

They're basically going to have to fend for themselves, I'm afraid. Some of them will go in shady areas where not much grows, but others will have to go in places where I've dug up the turf. I'm planning to place leaf compost around the base of each seedling to help reduce weed competition. We don't have deer here, but we do have rabbits. They seem to leave everything else alone now that I'm feeding them carrots. Still, I will probably put up chicken wire around those species most susceptible to grazing.

A little update... I've had some germination now. Most of the containers still haven't germinated, and most of those that have germinated have potting mix rather than topsoil. However, one container with topsoil has 1 seedling. I'm going to leave all these containers out until we have several days straight with highs in the 70s. If I don't get germination then, I'll just plant out what I have and disperse the rest in appropriate spots, hoping that the seeds are still viable.

I'm glad you're at least seeing some sprouts! Hopefully some more will still show up.

Yes, maybe as the weather warms up you'll see more sprouts. Have you had much rain?We've had way more than our share of that this year in SW Ohio.

Karen

The rain has been pretty regular. There was that week-long warm spell in April when it was nothing but sun, but May has been fairly moist. I'm certainly going to keep the containers out until at least mid-June before giving up on anything, especially since even those seedlings that have sprouted are very tiny.

Oddly, my biggest winter-sowing "success" was some Canada wild rye seeds I had in a bag filled with peat moss inside an outdoor closet. I forgot about it, and it germinated and grew large seedlings that were terribly root-bound. I was able to pull some of them out and transplant them, but most of them did not take it very well. Of course, that's a cool-season grass that I should have remembered to sow much earlier.