Well, to be honest, I have had a problem this year with something eating my seedlings after I've planted them out. Earwigs, slugs, rabbits, and chipmunks are some of the obvious culprits that come to mind.

Some clumps have just disappeared, some have been obviously chewed on, just stubby stems left with no leaves. Something -- I'm pretty sure it's rabbits -- recently chowed down on all my beautiful lupine seedlings! Just today I decided to set out a diversion platform feeder, hoping the seeds, dried fruit and lettuce trimmings will distract the little beasts long enough for my seedlings to regrow/recuperate.

I'm thinking that next year I might pot up a bunch of my seedlings, and grow them on in some kind of caged setup like the one Donn made, and then either plant them out in the fall, or try overwintering them with lots of mulch.

It's been very frustrating!

However, that said, I don't want to dissuade you from winter sowing. I have a great time collecting seeds and sowing them in the dead of winter, and the ones that have survived are doing well. Winter sowing is a great and very inexpensive way to get lots of healthy hardy plants.

I thought rabbits or birds or even ducks were the problem at first too. So I put some seeds in window boxes and have them on my deck railing with gutter guard over the top. That should eliminate ducks and rabbits and even curious birds. When the seeds came up the primary leaves still were chewed off. It has to be earwigs. I can't see slugs crawling that far up.
I'm still looking forward to trying winter sowing, I was just wondering whether it was a way to get my plants developed a little more before the earwigs came out.
I see some of the cosmos I bought have some of the leaves stripped off towards the bottom now. I bought some Sluggo Plus today, I'll see if that helps.

I just transplanted some Buttefly Weed into pots and placed them on tables I had made. The tables are 3 feet off the ground. The other day I noticed one of the seedlings was gone, except for the roots. In the evening, I noticed a little Junco pecking at my pots, so I placed a square wire basket over the ones he found most favourable. Since then, he goes over and just sits on the wire looking at the seedlings below so there hasn't been any more damage.

I used to live in the city 20 minutes away and the earwigs were horrible. Here, they are not as bad, so I'm not too concerned about them.

If you search for earwig control you'll find a lot of options to decrease the population in your gardens.

I went to the garden center today and bought some Sluggo Plus. It's supposed to take care of slugs and earwigs. Hope it works.