First Time WS #3

Here are my plants in the aquarium for this yr. There are cannas, hostas, daylilies, and red yucca growing good so far. BEV

You found us Robin! Come join in the fun. There are a lot of us first timers here.

I am on vacation right now for a few more days, but I am excited to get back home. I have been consciously waiting until after the holidays to work on my gardens. It has been hard to stay focused but now all of that is done and finished and I am ready to go. :)

How exciting Bev to be taking care of seedlings inside too. I am not that ambitious. I just hope to be able to take care of my outside babies when they do pop up.

Hi Lisa
New Mexico I see you are from, do you have any winter there? You must have fresh tomatoes all year!! MMM. I posted what I had planted on another thread and I think I may be in trouble they say my tomatoes are out to early. Yikes!!

Yes, we do have a mild winter. Temps are down in the 40s and 50s and snow from time to time. It never stays long though. I am new to gardening and am not quite brave enough to try real tomatoes. :) I have some cherry tomato seeds, and a current tomato that I thought would mostly just be fun to grow. I may try to start a few of them in my greenhouse, but I don't know much about that either, and my greenhouse is not a typical greenhouse so I don't know how to regulate temps in there yet. I figure I have a few years to learn all of this stuff.

We do have a fairly long growing season which makes it amenable for many different plants. I feel very blessed to find this out.

"I am excited and hopeful but my friends and relatives think I have surely lost my mind."

HAHAHA That is how it usually is for me, so welcome to the club, arejay!

Yeah, wintersowing can seem strange I guess, but it made perfect sense to me intuitively as soon as I ran across the descriptions of the method.

Everyone, don't know if you all are into gardening by the moon at all, but just a heads up if you are, the moon will be full in the sign of Cancer on January 10 which, helpfully, is a Saturday (the moon approaches full also in sign of Cancer on the Friday t he 9th......) Moon in Cancer is considered the most fertile moon sign for gardening activities, and seeds sown within three days of a full moon are said to have the best chance of successful germination.

anyway, whatever you may think of all that, I intend to do my second phase of WS-ing on Saturday Jan. 10.

;-)

Weatherwise we have had a warming trend, with rain as well, daytime temps to the low 40s but still frosting at night, all the snow melted away....... this is predicted to continue for a while so fingers crossed that the 10th will be a good day to sow. (I am also doing some broadcasting of red clover that day, hope to get some seed balls made up between now and then, on a scruffy area next to my actual garden space......)

Kyl,
I believe thank you for the dates... And I have to second the intuitive feeling when I started reading about winter sowing. It made sence to me perennials sit out all winter and know when to grow. So tomatoes must have an idea too!!
Robin
Robin

I think on Tomatoes it depends on where you live. Here in New Mexico we get an occasional volunteer tomato or two in the compost pile, but no where many as we get when we sow the seed inside or outside after the freezing weather has passed. In general, my guess is that the only volunteer tomatoes that survive a freezing winter are the ones which didn't germinate until after the freezes have ended.
Of course, I am just thinking. I have no experience in the matter.

I think the WinterSown website -- the owner of that is a member here too, but I have forgotten h er name -- is offering some tomato seeds specifically to winter sow, that have been bred to cold climates...... someone posted about that recently.

For me, I am just starting a new garden here and so not getting too many things going as yet so I did not take that offer up, but posting it here as info that at least those (I think) six varieties are winter-sow proven.....

I always get volunteer toms in compost, actually...... or have in the past.

Kylaluaz... that would be Trudi. yes, she is a member on Daves, but I do not think ive ever seen a post from her... possibly years ago... as i've only been here 2.

Thanks. Well, Trudi surely has given us all a lot of good things, eh?

yes... she does have a very informative web site.

Oh you two are smart. And you reminded me Trudi she sent me tomatoes... I'm home free.. Winter sown tomatoes I will prove my sanity after all.
Thanks

Trudi is the New Yorker who started this wintersowing in recyclable container lunacy which which we all so eagerly jumped into. Here at Dave's her username is "Poojer" I think, though not sure I'm spelling it right.

I could be mistaken but I'm pretty sure she sows everything in winter, including tomatoes. I tend to wait until closer to spring for tenders because, here in my zone 6, I have had them sprout too early then freeze and croak when winter weather comes back a few days later. But there's no such rule- just do whatever works for you. Tomatoes volunteer, so they are a candidate for wintersowing.

Karen

Thank you Karen!!

You all are going to love wsing. Last year was my first and I had several successes and a few failures. It was so much fun looking for seeds to germinate. Some that I failed with last year I am going to try again just because I can. Happy New Year y'all

Happy New Year and a lot of garden pleasure in 2009 to all.

Happy New Year!!

Quick question: How many seeds are you putting in a container? In my head I've just been thinking that I need as many milk jugs as I have little packets of seeds, but it occurs to me that this may be a little more complicated. Thoughts?

Thanks!
-GB

I've not been sowing all my seeds, especially the really fine ones. I'm saving some for spring sowing, just in case, but with the small ones, there are so many that if you sowed them all, the pot would be so crowded you couldn't divide them.

If the seeds are big enough to handle one by one, I put a seed every 1 or 1,5cm. If I have a lot of seeds and I want a lot of plants of it, I sometimes use 2 containers.

Since last year was my first I sowed everything too full of seeds but I am one of those more is better people. Some plants work with the hos method so if they are too full you can try that. Just cut or dig out a hunk and plop in the ground. I did that with alyssum, just sowed it in a pan and when it was time just cut 'brownie squares' and planted. It was the best alyssum I have ever grown and I actually had more than I needed but I made 2 pans full. Re my first sentence. Now I know one pan will be enough. The squares don't need to be over and inch square. Use a lasagne or a 9 by 13 size pan for a couple packs of seed from the $ Store. This year I plan on being a little more frugal with my seed and like Hemophobic save a few for spring sowing. BTW lots of folks wait until late Feb or Mar to ws annuals. Think I will do that this year as last year some of my annuals did not come up.

Sounds good, what you did with the alyssum. I'm going to try that too.
This does not work with perennials or larger flowers like poppies (theý'll stay very small). In that case I use tweezers to thin them out if they are very small, so the roots do not get intertwined.

Mostly I just used it for the front edges of the beds. I always had a lot of it die when I bought plants at the nursery but with hos they grew and were very lush. I would like to find seed for a very short variety. The 'Carpet of Snow' pkg says 4" but mine grew taller than that. Even so they made a nice border plant. You could put them in containers I would think.
Veronica

It is said that Alyssum 'Rosie O'day' and 'Snow Cloth' are short varieties.

I'll look for those but 'Rosie O'Day' sounds pink. Is it?

Yes it is a pink one. The 'Snow Cloth' is (obviously) a white one.
I will sow the 'Wandering Rose' this year, but I think it is not a short type.

Hello... may I jump in and play?

I started a Lasagna bed in fall of 2007. I''d be glad to show everyone the beginning of last spring and the end of fall if anyone is interested.

As the poppies, U was informed that they resent transplanting as well and told that in late March early April I can just take and broadcast them in situ and voila' I will have poppies. Now I am in WI but the person who told me to do it this way is very well up on poppies.

Just thought I'd drop in with that little info.

cececoogan, I would like to see your lasagna bed

Okey dokey see if I can find it. This is a new laptop and I'm still trying to get used to it
Can't find it I will be back

Cece: I too would love to see your lasagne bed.

Hi cece.... welcome...

and i too have found Poppies do not transplant well, at least after established.
I have not had problems with ones that i've WSed. I usually do the HOS method, and just plunk the whole lot of them in the same spot. Less 'trauma' to the roots.

I haven't loaded them on here yet so went down on the desk top. Seems DS has deleted all my files on there so now I need to get busy and load them. Will do that today and post the lasagne garden. We did this in September. I can tell you that my DH made a frame for me right on top of the ground. It's approximately 3'x65'. After the frame was in place I took our weed wacker and cut the grass as close to the ground as I could then layered newspapers as thick I had newspapers for. Then I took the partial load of compost put that in the covered it with about five inches of mulched leaves and keft it cook all winter. In May I tilled it and planted and it worked great.

This past September I did more or less the same thing with an island bed only no border but for containers, I used cardboard this time (from dgd's birthday party) and lots of shredded leaves. This will be a container and tropical garden anything that needs to be dug and stored indoors for winter and I have plenty of that.

Cherie

pswill get back once pics are loaded.

Hi Cherie! I'd love to see your pictures, too.

I was mulching our leaves to save for composting throughout the year, but ran out of bags so I spontaneously started a lasagne bed. That first one had newspaper underneath and leaf and grass clippings on top, and then a second one I put in this weekend has paper leaf bags underneath and mostly mulched leaves on top. I'm waiting until I can get to Starbucks to get some coffee grounds, and then I think I am going to top both beds with mulch. So you think I ought to try to find some greens for the bed with mostly leaves, or do you think it will be fine as it is?

Thanks for your thoughts!
-GB

Ah heck I would just leave it cook till spring unless you find you have something to just throw in there. That's what i do. I've taken potato peels and carrot peels (when it wasn't so cold) and just buried them under the chopped leaves. There's enough snow on it now its just frozen any way I didn't think to look where your at lets see Tx (don't I wish I was transplanted here in '66 from the Dallas/Fort Worth area!) I bet you can put something in there everyday lucky stiff.......veggie peels tea bags coffee grounds whatever I guess as long as it's not meat or dairy products. Egg shells too. Shredded wet paper.

I've got them loaded on here now. I've a picture for May, June and July. Thought I took a August but guess I didn't Here is how my bed fared 1st season

Taht was May this next one is July

The big bed is my fairy/butterfly/hummingbird bed.

yanno ... i have not seen a post by [Jim] Potagere in quite some time... anyone know if he was going on vacation??

Terese

I spoke to Jim yesterday or the day before he was trying to start a gift DVD for someone who has been in the hospital. Maybe he is busy finding the helpers.
Robin
Those are nice looking lasagna beds.

thanks Robin.

I love seeing the flowerbeds ! Thank you for the pictures.

I need inspiration on how to plant out these things that will be growing out of my milk jugs. :) Remember I am starting from scratch on everything. How do you know where to put everything? I am trying to put together some "groupings" of things with colors I want to see together. (Planning on paper) I am trying to think of something tall, something medium and a shorter groundcover for the front. I am trying to figure out some more "permanent" places for the perenials to go since they will for sure come back. But I am feeling a little overwhelmed. Do you have themes for you beds? Do you just throw stuff out there? Do you try to do certain colors together. What are you garden "theories" about placement? I want to hear it all. :)