It's almost time!! How are you coming along with your preparations? What seeds are you planning to start?
Okay Winter Sowers
Gathering 2L soda bottles. DH has switched over to frozen concentrate orange juice from fresh orage juice as an economizing measure. I switched from my one soda a day in the single serve bottle to 2L. Saving all those bottles and a friend is saving his.
I just got a bunch of seeds from the fall sale at Select Seeds: hollyhock, Italian alkanet, ferverfew, standing cypress, bronze fennel, prairie glow, branched coneflower, cleome, old Mexico zinnia, calendula, hyacinth bean, tassel flower, cornflower, morning glory (heavenly blue--my favorite), nicotiana, blue lace flower, custard & cream four o'clock, sunflower, coreopsis, gold star bidens, salvias, dayflower, and some petunias. I have some hold over seeds from last year. I have a lot of beds to fill in and it sure will be a savings if all these seeds grow into what I want!
I'm sorting through what I have and deciding what to start over Christmas break and what to start a little closer to spring. I understand the veggies are started closer to spring so I'm saving those for later. I've got a lot of hold over tomatos :). This is my first experience with WS. I'm nervous that it won't work but excited that it just might!
stephanietx, can you tell I'm jumping in with both feet?
Terri, I'm jumping in too! Like I posted at the WS board, I started looking at the WS threads because I wanted a better way to start my veggie seeds. Now I am obsessed with flowers, too! The only problem is that I just don't know where to start. Since I've only ever bought pansies, petunias and impatiens to plant from nurseries, most of these flower names mean nothing to me, and doing a search in plant files for every plant mentioned on the boards (and even on your impressive list!) is a little intimidating. Maybe later on today I can tackle looking all these plants up.
Do any Texans have any Must Haves for a cottagey WS flower garden?
Right now I am colecting, cleaning and cutting milk jugs and I just started my very first compost bin so I can ammend the soil for a big raised flower bed (darn you DG and all your pretty pictures of flowers!!!).
I can't wait to see how all our beds turn out!
-GB
This is my first year to ws, also. Not sure how it will do this far south (New Braunfels) since we don't have quite the cold that y'all have and never any snow. I have a bunch of flowers to try and some veggies as well. GB, I'll be doing alot of flowers for a cottage garden look too, Will be getting a bunch of seeds from the piggy swap on the cottage garden thread. Quite a few of those cottage gardeners ws, also. Are you familiar with the links to some of the ws lists that people have given access to that show their successes and failures? Anita has one and a couple of others, too, I think in addition to the WS database. I hear you though, its sometimes easier to ask peeps for suggestions than reading through the lists.
Wish I had some suggestions to offer. We'll be "larnin" together"!
Tonya
Anything with Larkspur looks cottagey to me. I sometimes start my seeds in egg shell halves and plant them straight into the ground.
Holleyhock, standing cypress, coneflower, cornflower,and coreopsis, should all be sown from Feb. March according to the map from my seed supplier. When I made the above post I didn't realize what Zone you were in.
This is from personal experience, although I'm not a true WS as I just sprinkle on the prepared bed and very lightly rake over and water a couple of days.
All varieties of Poppy, Hollyhock, Larkspur (the giant are already coming up) sweet pea, and morning glory. Have had very good luck for three years.
Christi
LouC-My experience is the same as yours for the seeds you mentioned. Poppies need to be sown anywhere S. of the Texas panhandle in the fall-winter. How do you WS morning glory? What varity do you use mine have already frozen. You are right that hollyhocks need to go in now. I don't even know where I got the idea they should go in later, my mind must have been someplace else!
In that I have had mixed HH and the French Mallow for some 4 years, it is hard not to just let them reseed on their own. I do try to catch as much seed as possible but...you know hard that can be. Same with all the others I mentioned. This is first time for sweet pea and I learned they should be planted now from Htop. No problem with morning glory. In fact, they are the only thing I really fight not to become invasive.
Christi
Are they annual morning glory? The ones I plant are hybrids and do not reseed themselves. Everything here just looks so dead because we have had no rain but it has gotten cold.
Where is Liberty Hill? Near Austin?
I guess the MG I have are mutts because they reseed.
Yes, I'm North of Austin West of Georgetown. We have some Native MG but they die back also.