First Time wintersowing?

25 here this morn but clear and no ice or snow. BEV

20degrees right now, (Terese how do you do the little degree symbol on a keyboard? ) Highs range from 40-55 for the rest of the month. Even the listings for record highs are only in the 60s so I am beginning to be a little more confident about putting my seeds out there. I know Jan is colder and then if I get plants in Feb, they will probably be ok!

I hate being cold. I am having dreams of vines climbing all over things and searching for lost packets of seeds.... LOL. Maybe I need to take a break.

lissa --- it's [Alt + 0176] for °

I had re-wrote the jugs last year a couple of time. Used a black permanent marker sharpy. It faded. This year I'm using a label machine. The tape is for industrial use and will stick to pretty much anything. Will not fade or smudge.

You can save up to 9 labels to print later. There's a bunch of options and such

You are just a font of information Terese. °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°woo hooo°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

learn something new every day, although you should have seen my fingers trying to press all those keys at the same time.... remember that game "Twister" hahahahaha

This is from last year

Those labels look amazing! I might have to look into something like that. I really want to keep track of my seeds and plants so that I can trade more next year.

One of favorite ws last season: Cappuccino Rudebeckia

The machine was $50 with a $20 rebate, so $30 + an extra industrial tape was $23. I think one tape cartridge is about 30 feet, but will need to check. There are different font size, icons and other features

Here's another ws. Did 65 jugs last year and most were exceptional

That is gorgeous! I love it.

OK, seriously being a wanna be gardener I would walk through Wal-Mart garden center and see the same old things all the time, and I would get a few petunias and some cosmos in the spring and that was it. I wasn't really that inspired.

Then I found this place. I want to grow everything! I am so inspired when I see people show off their plants and I think of where I could put them, and how they would look with this or that.... LOL. Yes, this is quite addicting.

What is the name of that last one you sent?

Did you have any jugs that didn't germinate at all? What were they?

The last one is Livingston Daisy or Ice plant. We had a terrible spring last year. Very Cold and huge snow storms well into May. Everything germinated, but for some reason the Allyssum could not handle the dip back into winter. Lost that. pretty much anything that states on the package that it can be direct sowed as soon as the ground can be worked or early spring will ws great.

I put a lot of ws stuff in this new flower bed. Lavantera, Dwarf Morning Glory, Daisies, Sunflowers etc. Purple rain pansies are in a pot hanging off the fence. also ws

This message was edited Dec 10, 2008 8:02 AM

WOW! That's gorgeous!

Thanks! For some, my garden is a little overwhelming.....lots & lots & lots of flowers. almost chaotic . Here's the thread of my new flowerbed started last spring.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/841310/

I never could be that neat. That is pretty and I see you like dragonflies like me. BEV

Joanna~ a gorgeous, beautiful testismony for W/Sing.Kudos for a job well done!... A tease for spring, since we received snow yesterday.

JoannaB,

What a beautiful garden!! That's what I want! But I've always been afraid to "crowd" things together too much.

It's been snowing all day here, but not too cold; between 28 and 35 Fahrenheit.

Beautiful garden, Joanna. I know what hard work it was, too, as DH and I started redoing all our beds, beginning with the front ones, this fall. We have a huge yard and it's a major undertaking, especially at our ages and doing all the work ourselves. I have a couple of areas near the back door just off the driveway that I'd like to dig up and put paving stones in for a seating area. There are two drawbacks to this: we have other, more pressing areas to address immediately AND if it were done, the view would be of the vehicles in the drive! I'm thinking lattice to hide the vehics, with lots of potted plants, vines, roses, etc.

My third drawback is convincing DH to undertake yet another garden area! I'll figure it out.

I enjoyed the views of your work in progress very much. Even though it's a lot of grunt labor, it's so rewarding ^_^

I love seeing your garden Joanna, and the transformation is amazing! It gives me hope for this year. I have the same image of a garden, just masses of things all together. Then when you get up close there are wonderful treasures tucked in here and there. I want birds and butterflies too. : )

Joanna -- is that the Brother Touch-whatever? I didn't see you name the product, and didnt see a name on it.

I know last year or so, they had a Co-Op for the Brother... thought it was still expensive though... but for $30, that doesnt sound too bad.

I am planning on wintersowing for the first time this year. I have received many perennial seeds from some generous DGers and some I purchased. I am collecting anything that I think will work, milk or water jugs, pretzel containers which someone already named, and just anything I see that will be easy to transplant from. I do not want to have to fight the container to get my new flowers out.

I will be sowing in late January as that is four months from the time I want to be able to transplant. This is my first year on DG and I've ended up with many new flower beds which need some perennials added and if I can grow them outside, much better for me and them, not to mention my pocketbook. :) I am really looking forward to this and my husband has jumped in and he is doing his vegetables too. so our yard is going to be full of "little greenhouses.:" Peg

Peg -- welcome to Winter Sowing, and to Daves. Hope you find it "home" before long. Great bunch of super folks here.

and if i can recall correctly... I usually dont have troubles getting the seedlings out of hte container... if i do, i just cut the sides down a bit more to get them out.

Milk jugs are really great, for one, they have that built in handle. and they do cut easily if they need to be split more to get the plants out... plus nice high 'roof' if your babies grow tall.

I think one thing i used that i wont again, are the small water bottles... i find the bigger the container the better.

Thanks TCS. DH was trying to save pickle jars and I could just see us having to break glass to get the plants out, not a good idea in my mind. He is thinking about using some old styrofoam coolers cut in half though, with plastic over the top for real big containers. I think that would work, so we are xperimenting here.

Hey, Peg! The other problem with pickle jars is they won't drain! You HAVE to have drainage!

Thanks, Jim,

You just gave me more ammo to fight the pickle jar wars, LOL! I know I read that but had not really thought it through yet completely. I first read about this last May for the first time, so I need to go back and re-read again before I get started. Everybody's pictures of their past wintersowing looks so nice, especially since we are below freezing right now.

Also, I have asked around at restaurants and there are a lot of them who said they had large plastic containers that they just throw out.

Thanks for all the great feedback. I don't mulch any of my flowerbeds, just fill it with plants. Survival of the fittest. The foliage provides enough to keep the soil from drying out too quickly. I start a lot of annuals from seed and plop them in where ever there is space.

Milk jugs worked great for ws for me. If you don't drink a lot of milk, there are a few places that would probably give them to you. I got a whole bunch from a Senior's Lodge/Home. The best part was that all the jugs were rinsed out & clean.

Currently it is a balmy 0C. We have had extremely mild winter temperatures so far. It's all coming to an end this weekend. forecast is for -30C brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr That's -22F for you imperial folks. I won't start any ws until March

Welcome, Merpeg. This is a wonderful site, full of helpful people and marvelous tips. I've learned so much from my fellow DGers. Of course, the down side is that the more I learn and the more threads I visit, the more addictive it becomes. I've now added roses to my previous addictions of daylilies, dahlias and hydrangeas, with salvias beginning to loom large on the horizon! Be warned!

You'll love it here!

Little Mermaid

Welcome Peg,
I, too, am new to WS and Dave's Garden. I love it here, everyone is so nice and friendly and so helpful.

I am a long time gardener but this will be my first season to winter sow. I always thought it meant putting seeds out where they are to grow in the winter. I wasn't planning to grow seeds in little plastic mini-greenhouses.
I was going to sow blue flax, California poppies and Shirley poppies right in the ground where they are to grow. Maybe some bachelors' buttons also. Is there any reason not to do that?
Also are there any veggie seeds that do well with winter sowing? I was thinking of spinach and possibly lettuce. Have any of you tried those? Any other suggestions?

I direct sow all of those in the ground paj and they do fabby. Spinach and lettuce especially luv the cold start outside in the ground I find.

Good news on both! I thought lettuce would be okay but somewhere in my life someone told me that if spinach seed freezes it will bolt early. But clearly that is melarkey. I have had spinach reseed itself after a winter. Why can't I do it? And I have had escarole refuse to germinate in warm weather and then pop up the following spring. Okay, time to plant the little piece of raised beds that haven't got irises in them.

tcs1366 wrote:
Joanna -- is that the Brother Touch-whatever? I didn't see you name the product, and didnt see a name on it.

I know last year or so, they had a Co-Op for the Brother... thought it was still expensive though... but for $30, that doesnt sound too bad.



It is a brother P-touch model PT-1010
www.P-touch.com

I have a Brother. Yes it was expensive -- I have a 20and something. And the tape is expensive, but it sure does work, even outdoors and is easy to operate once you read the instruction manual. Love mine.

Don't we need a new thread? This one's getting rather long.

Yes, definitely. It's hard to follow the thoughts when they get too long. It surprised me when I first joined Dave's that these long threads were common.

Starting a new thread for new thoughts, comments, questions keeps it easier to follow I think. And you're definitely more likely to get several opions with one thought per thread. (i.e. a thread about a continer question, a thread about stratification, a thread about fertilization, etc)

Karen

You are right, Karen.
But just chatting among ourselves is always fun, too!
It becomes like a real conversation, where one thought leads to another, we get sidetracked, etc.
I sometimes think that the digressions help us know one another better and become closer and more caring and helpful to one another.
Just my thoughts.
But I agree a new thread is probably called for now.
Go for it, LissaD!!!