I live in Colorado - the land of harsh sun - made that up myself;))

Last year, I placed my jugs where they would be easy to water. LAZY WINTER SOWER HERE. This was between a privacy fence and east side of my house. About 16 feet between the house and the fence. Then 15 feet to the next house.

Early am: shade/daylight
10am-1pm: sun
1pm on: shade/daylight

During 3 hours of direct sun, for the most part only half of each jug received the full sun and the other half of each jug received daylight. A distinct line, between sun and daylight, could be seen during this time and during sprouting.

Make sense?

Turned out that the seeds in the daylight sprouted much much better then the full sun - where very few sprouted. Those, in the full sun, that did sprout mostly succumbed to being cooked. Sincere apologies to swappers that sent such wonderful, eventually tortured, seeds!!

This year, I am mostly sowing only perennials and moved my jugs to the north side of my yard, behind a tall wall where very little direct sun should hit them ever, until planting time. Most annuals will be direct sown (LAZY - remember?). The few that I do WS will be added behind the wall in a few more weeks.

This is my second year, so still learning...

AMAZING results last year though and SO easy, I'm trying to figure out how to make it even easier - at least until I can get my kids to do the sowing and planting!!

Great question. I was wondering the same thing.

That is so encouraging, because I'm a pretty lazy gardener too. I'm glad somehow else is having success and without intense concentration.

Sherri

Most of my containers are placed on my patio which gets full sun on one side in the morning and full sun on the other side in the afternoon. So that makes a half day of sun. Germination is good on both sides.

Click on thumbnails to enlarge:

West side WS 2008

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East side WS 2008

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Oh my, look at all those HOS! And all those liter bottles and milk jugs! How many total? I'd sure hate to have to plant them all. You've done the easy part; now comes the hard part. Please take a picture of them all planted and one when they are all in bloom. Can't wait to see them. Do you have any pics from last year that you can show us of your blooms?

I posted photos of many of the plants from those containers on the gallery sight starting Dec. 6 2008 with one a day for several pages.

Start at the link and move forward through the pages to see them.

Here is a link that might be useful: mnwsgal '08 postings in ws gallery