HI Nora,

Yes it sure does work for us WI gardeners. I have so many seedlings coming up I am really amazed. I planted I think 94 different flowers (seeds).

Right now off the top of my head. Coming up are.

Dianthis siberian blues
Poppies of all sorts.
Lavatera
Foxgloves
Buttefly bushes

There are alot more cant think right now. Second shift just got home and it is dark out. I wish I would have known about this method earlier. People thought I was nuts planting all them containers in january. I am glad it turned out..... Think of all the pretty flowers you an get an not have to pay big bucks for them..... ps I am not far from you. In waushara county. You can do annuals now also. Barb

Hi Barb,

I have some envy for your butterfly bushes and foxglove. :) I have not been successful with butterfly plants. None have sprouted for me yet. I think foxgloves are beautiful, and I understand that they can tolerate some shade. I have two small children, and they are very into plants. I have some concern about them possibly ingesting the foxglove. This is probably a little too over-protective on my part, but I'm going to wait until they're a bit older before I start planting the foxglove. :)

I have started planting annuals, and I was probably a bit too early with some. Even though a freeze was not forecast on Monday night, I had some morning glories, zinns, dahlias, and marigolds that got zapped -- covered and uncovered. The funny thing is, I had plenty of zinns, marigolds, tomatoes, and sunnies that did just fine. I guess this was a "patchy" frost. :) Oh well, I've still got plenty of seeds to make up for the ones I lost.

I also picked up a tip to get milk jugs from local coffee shops, so I've been able to get quite a few new containers quickly. :)

I hope this spring weather holds now, and we are done with drops into the 30s and snow flurries. I know it is Wisconsin, but I think we've done our winter penance for the year.:)

cheers,
Nora

Hi, Nora,

I'm just down the highway from you in Oshkosh. I'm gunshy on the foxglove, too. No kids, but I'm terrified of poisoning my and my neighbor's dogs. So no hellebore, either, which is rough since it looks so cool in the Jung's catalog.

Funny what survives our strange weather, isn't it? I've got all kinds of containers that shouldn't have survived our drop in temperature, but have. I've even got some sunflowers that have survived falling off the mini greenhouse -- twice!

Out of the 91 containers I've done so far, everything but the Columbine has sprouted. Everything from sweet peas to hollyhocks to nasties to dahlias is up and growing merrily.

My mom did the blue picotee morning glories last year. They didn't look as nice as they do on the package, but they were still pretty darn cool.

Since I'm a one-woman household, I don't go through enough milk to keep me in containers, so I also use the baggie method described on Trudi's site. I get the cheap freezer bags from Fleet, fill 'em up and set them in the seed trays with holes. I can fit five bags per tray, which is nice.

This weather is so frustrating! I need to get out and prep some new beds for all these babies, but the ground isn't dry enough!

~Kristi

Hi, Kristi,

I hear you about the weather! I tried to dig up a new area with the "instant bed" method, and the "soil" that came up was like what I used in pottery class in high school. It is now in between hardening into clay lumps or ready for the pottery wheel. :(

We don't drink enough milk in our household, either. I have a number of salad containers and old seed flats. Recently, I started asking my neighbors for their milk jugs. They only think I'm half crazy. :) Also, I've been going to joe-to-go and Starbucks for used coffee grounds, and I started asking for their milk containers. Gold mine! :) They looked a bit startled when I asked, but they have TONS of containers. I am going to collect milk jugs from them for next year's winter sowing.

I planted out some Autumn Beauty sunnies yesterday that are on their second and third sets of leaves. I'm a little worried about the temps tonight, but the roots were growing out of the bottom of the containers!

I planted two containers of columbine and NOTHING. I was really excited about a Rose Barlow variety. I guess I will try not to give up hope yet . . . . :)

I have a bunch of delphs that I hope will sprout. I found three seedlings this morning. I know they take a long time to germinate. We'll see.

I have also found some of the BIGGEST slugs I have ever seen in my yard, so I am worried about them eating the seedlings. (They were at least an inch long and as thick as my pinky finger. Disgusting.) Maybe the excess moisture is bringing them in from elsewhere?

From the reading on the WS forum, it sounds like slugs can be a real problem. I have some diametetious earth (sp?), and I might get some slug-go, too.

If tomorrow is as nice as weather.com promises, I am hoping to get some of my prairie flowers and poppies into the ground.

cheers,
Nora

Ah, Wisconsin and clay! That's what I found yesterday when I was digging a border around my herb & veggie patch. The organic lawn care forum has some great ideas about improving turf, so that's my next project aftr the gardens are established.

I mixed a little bit of the clay with some compost and black dirt. I saved the clay because there were lots of worms in it, so my hope is eventually they and the wonderful castings they leave break it down into something useful. Either that or I'll open my own brick factory!

I wouldn't worry about the sunflowers. They're tough little things (see: container fell off of a 4-foot high shelf and they're still growing). The whole reason I got into wintersowing in the first place was the observation that the seeds I planted in May didn't do anything, but the seeds that fell out of the plants in the fall had been growing since March!

Keep the faith on the columbines. Mine aren't doing anything yet either. Folks on the WS forum say they can take awhile.

I've also read that a dish of beer makes a good slug trap. Apparently there's something in the beer the slugs like, the big boozers.

And now I'm off to the store for more dirt (NOT more seeds. For real. I'm really, truly done buying seeds. I mean it :) and then it's outside all day!!!

~Kristi

I hope you had a successful dig in the garden yesterday. :)

Yes, amending the soil here is a constant process. Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised while digging for worms for my daughter. The soil in my veggie garden really is "loamy." It's darkish brown/black, crumbly, and easy to dig. Two feet away, outside my garden, is unamended soil, which grows grass very poorly. It is redish-brown with minimal streaks of black/brown. It squishes and holds together like, well, wet clay. It does have worms in it, but they must be tired much of the time trying to work through such stuff. Maybe I will start sprinkling some UCG on the lawn as some on the soil and mulch forum suggest. At this point, it couldn't hurt. :)

cheers,
Nora

Wintersowing really did work. How did your seeds come out? Here are my poppies I ws in milk jugs. Barb

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