Welcome to the wild, wonderful, insane, magical world of winter sowing Brad!! You've found some of the friendliest folks on GardenWeb. Have you read the winter sowing FAQs as well as the information on trudi's website, wintersown.org? That's where you'll find the answers to most of your questions. There are helpful lists of plants by zone that make good WS candidates.

You'll soon learn one of the downsides of common plant names is they don't tell you whether they're perennial, annual or biennial while the botanical names clear things up pretty quick.

Annuals:
Zinnias, sunflowers, marigolds, nasturtium, celosia, four o'clock & peppers

Perennials:
Columbine, blanket flower, rose campion, hollyhock, balloon flower & oriental poppies

Black-eyed Susan & gloriosa daisy self seed so even though the original plant dies over the winter, you should have new ones the next year.

Those are general guidelines and if I'm wrong someone here will let us both know.

What type of garden are you aiming for? I'll have LOTS of perennial seeds to trade later in the fall. As a newbie, I invite you to chose a few in exchange for a SASBE. Check my trade list & shoot me an email if you're interested.

Hi Gardenweed,

Thanks for the warm welcome! A majority of the seeds I recieved I already knew were annual or perennial. The lady that sent me the gloriosa daisy seeds wrote on the envelope "reseeds". I've been looking through the FAQ a few times.

Mom and I have a mix of annuals, perennials, veggies and herbs in our garden. I got the milkweeds in hoping to draw some monarch butterflies into the yard. Although, we have plenty of hummingbirds and different types of butterflies, I haven't seen monarchs except by the wild common milkweed growing up by the woods. Most of the seeds we've grown before. A few plants like morning glories, cosmos and even chamomile reseeded and have come back up.

I'll check out your trade list and see what you have. I'll send you an e-mail if I see any I'm interested in.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

It's your choice to post where you're located but it might be helpful for folks to more easily answer any plant questions you may have if you include a general location. We're both Z6 but where I am in CT may not be a similar climate to your Z6.

I have common milkweed my Mom planted nearly 50 years ago. I believe the botanical name is asclepias syriaca. She grew the monarchs every year. I found monarch cats on the milkweed this year & shot some great photos but the one that pupated never emerged from the chrysalis. I hope to be better prepared next year.

I am in Central PA, where I live in a valley that can get very windy at times, since we live (my parents and I) at the bottom of a mountain. It's beautiful here.

Yes, Asclepias syriaca is the right botanical name for common milkweed.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

Brad, welcome to the wintersowing forum.

If you add your location on your member page, it will show up every time you post. Then, as gardenweed suggested, whenever you ask a question, people will know where you live.

And to clarify the botannical name thing:

There are both annual and perennial flowers known as forget-me-nots. (cynoglossum and myostosis)
Both rudbeckia hirta (annual or short lived perennial) and rudbeckia fulgida (perennial) are both called black eded Susan.
And I know of at least 2 plants know as touch-me nots- impatiens balsamina and impatiens walleriana, two very different plants.

It seems like a pain to learn the botannical names, I know. (I can read or type a lot of them but can't pronounce most!) And many times traded seeds come with only a common name. But at least if you have a bot. name you can google it and find out if it's annual or perennial in your zone.

That's another easy pitfall. A seed site or a trader might say something is perennial, but it might not be perennial in your zone. So, again, google becomes your friend!

Again, welcome to wintersowing and the forum.

Karen

Google goes a step further and also provides the correct pronunciation. I was struggling for years with how to pronounce cotyledon until I Googled it. Dave's Garden Plant Search also gives the correct pronunciation of both common & botanical names.