i totally understand!! the looks i get when i ask people to save their milk jugs and plasic containers for me. the blank stare....the ladies at the post office know the only reason i'm there. the woman that delivers our mail actually asked me what i was doing. i told her and she thought it was great. the good thing is now i've got my mother and my step-mother in law are going to try the winter sowing. my co-worker asks me to request seeds for her on the seed exchange. she doesnt have a computer. my boss thinks i am nuts because he owns the nursery i work in and we have all our seeds on heat mats in the greenhouses. he still lets me raid his recycling. i think its fun to make people think im wierd.
Tanya

I seem to be addicted to the 10/$1.00 seed sales at the moment. I get the dead stare from the sales clerks that sees that I only have seeds and realizes that that was my purpose for coming in.

DH also doesn't understand me rummaging through the recycling to find containers to plant seeds. He just shakes his head.

Good going Tanya... show them the way! Hey booberry, let the clerks stare. You'll be the envy of zone 5 in no time!
I have resorted to putting out new containers under cover of night, but I'm already planning where to plant those soon-to-be-sprouts.

No, they don't understand. Last year, my 1st year of wintersowing, I planted a TOTAL of 103 containers, winter, spring & summer. This year I already have 102 containers either planted, or labeled & set up for planting a little later in the winter. I am definitely going to need more jugs, but my family is having fits! Oh well, last year they thought I was crazy until they saw all the beautiful plants I grew.

Luckily I have a nice fence around my yard so the neighbors dont see my bottles. I do worry if they notice me going back to the compost pile behind the trees with my bucket-o-stuff tho.

My neighbors idea of gardening is going to Target while the landscaping guys come to cut the grass.

:)

I know it is a little discouraging to have people react to you in a negative way when you are so excited about doing something that you find makes so much sense to you, but...I think you are completely correct to say most people don't understand.

If those someones are not gardeners, then they are really not in sync with the natural world and all that experience teaches us. If they are neat and orderly, then seeing someone pulling things out of the rubbish must be disturbing and a little embarrassing...lol. Despite the fact that now it is really sensible and patriotic to recycle for the good of the planet, most people have not wrapped their minds around the fact that these small acts can make much difference in the big scheme of things. Especially, when you see Corporate America making major decisions that would seem to undo any good your little effort at recycling can do. To someone with these perspectives, I wouldn't expect them to understand really.

Also, if I put myself in their place, if I saw one of my sons starting this type of a hobby..and it wasn't a gardening hobby, but something I knew little about, like car mechanics and they were going to recycle the milk jugs to drain their oil or some such..and leave milk jugs all over the yard/garage/house...making a mess...I don't think I would be very accepting of that behavior either..lol.

Then to top it all off...if I saw one of my kids, getting so involved in a similar hobby, that they were suddenly not paying as much attention as they should to things they NEEDED to be doing, neglecting chores, procrastinating home repairs or other important activities, then I might be giving them looks and biting my tongue a lot.

I try to keep all these things in mind as I enjoy my winter sowing and try to keep my balance and not give anyone around me, reason to be unhappy with my new hobby. :-) Things have a way of working themselves out if you just keep taking things one step at a time. Once the family sees the results of your winter sowing efforts and sees that you are sensitive to their needs, not to have messes everywhere, etc. Once they see how happy you are when it is winter sowing season and they become aware of other people who winter sow and don't think it is crazy... sometimes they surprise you and start to look at it in a very positive way.

Of course, the post office clerks etc..well..that might take a little longer...lol. Maybe if you bring them some seedlings in the spring, they will be looking at you a whole lot differently next time they see you coming.

:-)
pm2

I have been a crazed recycler for a long time now; the weird looks have ended for the most part. I recycle everything, and I have asked people for all kinds of jugs & such. I use the huge laundry soap containers you get at the club stores for my chicken's waterers (well washed, of course). Milk jugs for winter sowing. Soda cups from fast food (plastic) for scooping feed. When they break, they get tossed, and they have gotten extra use. Most towns have 1 bin for recycling, I use 4. I also met a local young man who picks up scap metal. I had him take a couple of truckloads away (we re-did our roof)!

Anyway, go for it! If you share a plnt here and there, you'll get more milk jugs than you know what to do with. Some people are so thrilled about the plants that they'll even wash them for you.

Hooray for Winter Sowing!
Robin

I've been avoiding the embarassment factor of going to our communal recycling center in my condo development to dumpster dive for milk jugs but I'm going have to break down and just do it. I can't wait any longer and the guy who supervises it has "recycled" toys and books for his now 16 year old daughter for years so I doubt he'd look at me strangely...LOL.

Once when my father was helping me get a load of stuff to the recycling center he spotted some left over wood from renovators and he snagged it for the birdhouses he built for me and other possible projects! He sees fresh leftover wood as "a real find" but my soil mix, containers and all that goes with WS'ing and planting as "junk"...LOL.

Beauty and usefulness are in the eye of the beholder.

There is value to other members of the family even though they don't winter sow or garden. It's just a matter of time until they find out what that value is, but when they do, they will not say another word (at the very least), and may even begin to show interest and help in the gardens.

DH would grumble about the tools I left out, the containers I would forget here and there, the seeds on the table, etc. DD would feel embarrassed when I picked up containers from the curb or got really excited in front of her friends when seeds arrived in the mail. Yes, I do jump up and down and yell "YES!" as though I won the lottery.

We bought our property in 2001. There was not a shrub and not a flower. There was one rock wall covered in grass and weeds. In the last 6 years I have managed to build more bones and plant more gardens than I ever thought possible with very little $$ through propagations, gifts, and, most of all, winter sowing.

Last summer we had to do what I call financial juggling. We discovered that the value of our home/property had increased way beyond 50%, yet we had done virtually nothing to the house. DH didn't understand the increase in the market value of our property, and so the assessor asked to see pictures of the day we bought it. Then he calmly explained to DH that the gardens and 'bones' which had been established in the last few years were the 'culprit'. DH looked at me and smiled and answered that they were not 'culprits ' at all. The juggling was quite successful and very painless if you get my drift!

DH helped a lot with starting to establish another garden late in the summer. He picks up after me without grumbling, although I must say I'm doing much better at not leaving my things around. He'll even ask if I need help... Wow! Last night he even asked if I needed more potting soil from the basement.

Things change. A different perspective just has to be presented for them to do so.

Did my first 10 today, and plan to try Wsing 40 or 50 more things this winter. Have to scavenge containers...and more soil...and...well...stuff.

A friend from work and I are actually working on the gardening projects together this year....My nephew helped me today...31 years old...gave me a few odd looks..but helped out anyways.

hehe

I think I have an advantage over most everyone else.. most everyone thought I was odd before I started this WS venture!!!

LOL

BTW.. I WS'd basil today. I doubt it will sprout in Spring, but you never know!

I am sure my neighbors thought I was nuts and a total "redneck" when all of a sudden these milk jugs filled with unknown things started to pop up in my yard last winter but let me tell you this spring and summer while I was out in the garden I had a ton of people who always told me you garden looks so pretty or I love all of your flowers. I even told my sisters about WS and gave them each a bunch of seeds. The down side is I don't think any of them will WS any of the seeds for various reasons but that is ok I will have tons of extras flowers again this spring. Even my son's girlfriend's mom wants some of my left over babies this spring. I have already 23 jugs started and I still have over 200 more seed types to plant up and I am still buying more seeds. This time I was smart I started saving the milk jugs this past SUMMER. I have about 4-5 maybe more of the big black trash bags full of empty jugs just waiting to be sliced open and planted. And I am still collecting milk jugs.

One time I came home with even more Zinnia seeds and dh asked why more zinnias and he goes just as I am saying the same thing "Let me guess Because they are purple". And also my walmart had the bright fluorescent yellow zinnia I had to get those they will look so good next to the fluffy purple ones I got the other day.

Now I just need to figure how how to make beds in my ever shrinking yard.

Does anyone know if Zinnias can be planted in the shade and still bloom? hehe

Paula

Zone 3 but some late frost like zone 1. Hubby grumbling about big sack of SW plantables so may have to move it more out of the way. Can we use plastic drink cups for anything? My first year, nothing planted yet as I am unsure of soil: What mix of "Wal-mart jiffy mix seed starter" and "plantars mix" to use. Container question: can we use those clear drink plastics (rectangle) and how full do we fill them with soil? Bought coreopsis but want to do veggies.

Get this...

I just now realized..we have lots of 2 1/2 gallon water jugs...you know..the fill once and toss jugs, with the spigot? Rectangular shaped....If I cut them all around the shortest sides, each will provide about triple the sowing area of a regular gallon jug! I can actually put little dividers in AND PLANT SEVERAL DIFFERENT SEEDS! Yes! Those vertical blind louvers come to the rescue again! As water jug dividers!!!!

woohoo!

I can plant...20 or 30 things tomorrow now!!!!!

Even my own family does not understand =(
I have been telling them for months to save all the milk cartons. Yet, every day I have to look and make sure they didn't throw them away! Don't they know I am saving money and the environment??
Yet still, 2 or 3 times in a week I have to save my beautiful milk cartons.
At the stores I have been buying food for the containers. Wow, those wonderful rotissari chickens have an excellent container for ws and the salad containers oooh yaaaa!

Hey zengeos, great idea about those dividers. I do something similar with 5 gallon oil jugs that I get from the Chinese restaurant just down the avenue from my place (once I clean them well with hot soapy water and a little Mr. Clean.)
The advantage of city gardening is that you can find things like 5 gallon oil jugs. The disadvantage is that the streets are so crowded that at least 20-30 passersby will actually see me taking it from their garbage half a block to my building! (And this is at 10:00 at night!)
These containers are great for several reasons:
1) They are big enough that I can actually put several small plastic flower pots in each one and pack the spaces between the pots with soil to put in even more seeds.
2) The top is high enough so that the temperature changes inside the container are not as drastic as they are in small containers and the seedlings do a little better.
3) When it has finished doing its job as a wintersowing greenhouse, I can use the cut jug as a container for plants. They work great as liners that can turn large baskets into planters.
Yes, I am a proud garbage-picker... and a proud wintersower.

"My neighbors idea of gardening is going to Target while the landscaping guys come to cut the grass." --LOL, Doris!

This is my first year WSing. And really, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Most seed winters over and then you get "volunteer plants". Every year, I have "volunteers" -- hollyhock, sunflower, cherry tomato, marigold, basil, and even last summer, I got about ten very nice cantaloupe from vines that came up out of composted soil that I had just moved into a new raised bed. I didn't even have much for it to grow in yet at that spot, and at first I thought the plant was cucumber so I trained it onto a trellis. Imagine how well it would've grown with better conditions!

Thanks to several generous folks, I have WS'd a lot of really interesting-sounding plants that I never tried before. I do not have good luck with seeds I plant in the ground in spring. Some of them never come up. They dry out just at the wrong time. Or the cat digs them up. Or the dog walks on them. Or the birds eat the seed! And worse yet, I've even been known to forget what I planted where and have PULLED THEM UP thinking they're weeds! Whoever coined the term "Golden Years" must not have been old.

When you think about it, it's just really nature's way, what we're doing, except that we are protecting the seed from drying out and from all the other things that happen to it. The "volunteer" plants seem to "know" when it's time to come up. So this is going to be really interesting to me to see how the milk bottle makes the difference. With my milk bottles clearly marked (with grease pencil), that alone will keep me from destroying seedlings thinking they're weeds!

I live on the back of a small town park. People use the sidewalk that runs about ten feet from my back chain link and I see them sometimes just standing there looking over my garden in the summer. If I'm out there they always make comments and ask questions. I always grow tomatoes in my raised beds and people around here seem to be really interested in tomatoes. Those who don't have space for anything else, will grow that. I plant mammoth sunflowers and hollyhock just outside my fence, they get a lot of attention; so much so that somebody actually cut off one of the sunflower heads last year and made off with it. And they love to look over the grapevines just inside my fence that grow on an "arbor" DH made me out of iron pipe, pipe elbows and stock panels. Those same people walk the park all year 'round and now they've started to ask questions about what all those milk jugs are in the corner of one of my raised beds. I mean, these folks truly get involved in my garden. In the hottest part of the summer, when I'm not very good about getting out there and pulling weeds, they let me know about that, too!

So thanks everybody for taking the time to post advice and especially to those who've sent seed to me, and in fact sent seed to the person who sent seed. I got really excited about some of the seed I got after I Googled and saw what some of the plants look like! I keep a "gardening journal" on my computer and I like to copy the pictures of what the things I plant are supposed to look like from the Internet, along with any other information I can get: height, growing conditions,culinary or medicinal uses, etc., and paste them into my journal. So I was really busy doing that for awhile.

I still have planted my tomatoes and peppers inside this year. I know the tomatoes would probably be fine WSing but I'm not sure about the peppers. They seem to need to be warm all the time and I've been told that if their roots get cold it affects production for the life of the plant. DH is a tomato lover and I like to can whatever excess I have so having good tomato plants is important. If things do as well as I think they will this spring, I will WS tomato seed next year.

I too am having trouble collecting enough milk jugs, but I will save all year now and be better prepared next year. I just can't take things out of people's trash. I work for an agency that provides jobs to people with disabilities, and one of the businesses we run is a recycling center. But taking things out of the bins is a big no-no for us. The mess in the parking lot people make when digging around in our bins means we have to spend a lot of time cleaning up after them. Things blow across into other people's property and they have the police come out and tell us to clean up. If we don't do it fast enough we are fined. When there are lots of people taking recycling materials, it really reduces the amount of stuff we ship out and affects our income. So if you live near a recycling center, please ask them first if it's OK for you to take things. They might have things they can't recycle and have to throw away that you can have all you want of. In our case, that would be anything made of styrofoam. And any time any of you dumpster dive, please clean up after yourself. Don't climb in. There are sharp metal objects, broken glass, and sometimes even 'poo' in there. Although the mess that's made is always a problem, what most businesses fear about dumpster divers is that they will get hurt and sue.

So thanks everybody for taking the time to post advice and especially to those who've sent seed to me, and in fact sent seed to the person who sent seed. I got really excited about some of the seed I got after I Googled and saw what some of the plants look like! I keep a "gardening journal" on my computer and I like to copy the pictures of what the things I plant are supposed to look like from the Internet, along with any other information I can get: height, growing conditions,culinary or medicinal uses, etc., and paste them into my journal. So I was really busy doing that for awhile.

Ilene, nothing makes me happier than to read what you said. WS really is a springboard for learning, and most of the time because we're hungry for that knowledge it's so easy to find and take in. We learn to learn and it is an easy thing to do ;-)

T

Well said, Ilene!

I often think how wonderful it is that winter sowing takes place during shortened days because I've found the best place for my containers is right in the front of my house. Someone complained about my containers last year so this year I took a copy of a printout on wintersowing (and some seeds) to the lady at the homeowners office to explain that I wasn't really decorating my foundation bed with plastic throwaways. She promised to call me if there were complaints so I'd have time to move them before she had to send me another letter. Meanwhile, I'm painstakingly arranging all my containers so that each kind is together so the containers look very deliberate.

To those of you worried about having enough containers, don't forget you can always raid the dollar store for those cheap clear storage containers. Some disinfecting and holes and presto! Ready for seeds...

You know you have 'issues' when you slip and fall on ice while rescuing milk jugs from trash bins in front of other peoples homes. OUCH!

It was worth it.

Partick, Sounds like you're taking the commando tactic for rescuing jugs. Glad it was worth it... and I hope the bumps and bruises go away quick

Ha, I love to read about other people dumpster diving and picking through people's stuff on their curbs! lol I haven't done that because in this rural area where recycling isn't required (but it should be) people have their trash in tied up bags and there would be all sorts of yucky things in there, and I probably wouldn't even find any milk jugs in there anyway because people around here usually burn things like that (we recycle ours). The houses are further apart here than they are in town and it would cost the county (or whoever does it) a lot in gas to pick up recyclables. It's done on a voluntary basis and whoever wants to drop off their recylables can do that downtown. It's available the first Saturday of every month so we save up everything until then and drive it down. There's always one or two people there to make sure people put the right things in the right places. They have two huge "dumpsters" there for various types of plastic and glass. We do have to end up throwing some plastic bottles away because they only take #1's and #2's. I do wish that the government would make recycling mandatory everywhere because the landfills won't hold everything forever.

Anyway...I got off my main subject. I was going to say that because we save them, I had at least a dozen jugs saved up when I found this forum and then just kept saving all of them after that for my wintersowing instead of taking them downtown. I have a miniature "town" outside with all of my milk jugs now. I still have my annuals to do but my perennials are all done. Even though I haven't picked up jugs from anyone's curb, I was driving downtown during the month of November when the borough was collecting leaves from whoever would leave them in bags out on the curb. You should see all of the garbage bags full of leaves that are laying out back here! lol Leaves are such good compost for gardens, and it doesn't make sense to me for people to throw those into landfills either, so I rescue as many as I can. :)