I'll be wintersowing petunias, trailing carnations and moss rose. The petunias will last until mid July here in the heat. The carnations, don't have a clue since I've never grown them. The moss rose will last until the first heavy frost and is very drought tolerant. I may substitute vinca for the carnations. I haven't been able to find out if they bloom the first year.

My boxes are 6" deep, 4' long, about 8" wide.

Token I grew carnations in a container last year and they bloomed. As a matter of fact they were really tolerant of dry soil and bloomed right up till frost.

Sweet. Thanks for that information. These are red and should be gorgeous with the white and pink petunias. Thanks :)

I use windowboxes for spinach in the early spring. I usually only do one or two. This year I plan to do four and freeze the extra. We've made some spinach pizza and lasagna it's really great with homegrown! Then,for summer,I grow bush beans in them. The boxes are 3 and 4 ft., typical teracota-colored plastic ones.

But I do plan to WS the blue ageratum from you and moss roses sound really nice too, which will end up in windowboxes. But, these windowboxes are not displayed under windows, they are on wrought iron shelving out on our deck!

I plant a lot of containers/window boxes/hanging baskets and one of my latest favorites to add is purple basil. It adds a little height and a different colored foilage too. Mine lasted all summer until the first frost. Oh and I did winter sow it too (did it late, about April).

I would like to give this a try.

Can you please tell me what you cover your window boxes with? Or do you leave them uncovered?

I plan to cover mine with a sheet of plastic I have left from building my hoop house. I'll fold it a few times over and snip the corners to provide air and water. It's already got good drainage. I will staple the plastic to the bottom. The boxes are wooden and I built them myself last spring from marine grade plywood. As it warms up, I'll just pull the plastic off. If I need to recover, I'll improvise something.

I have some room left in my cold frame. If I need that extra room, I'll use shish-ke-bob sticks in the wondow box to hold up a dry cleaning bag to cover them.

I used plastic bags which were held up by dry cleaner hangers with the cardboard tube removed. One on each end and one in the middle. Worked great. Clothes pins were used to clip the plastic to the edge of the window box.