I am by no means an expert. but I think it is valuable for texas because one can get tomatoes started earlier and get the fruit longer before it gets too hot for the fruit to set fruit. It will stretch the crop period , the same way it does up north but up there they are racing the end of summer. Here we are racing against the beginning of the hot summer. It is the first year that I have tried. I put some Gazania seed in some four inch pots outside and they have not come up, but the ones that I wintersowed are up and happy through the cold weather. I also have tansy sprouting and pike peak pentsemon sprouting in clear plastic cake containers. I am 3 for 3, so far, so good. My family drank 4 more gallons of milk and so I just put out 4 types of heirloom tomatoes the other day. Still drinking milk so more seeds will get put out as the time goes on. I am willing to give it a try since I do not have a greenhouse and do all my sprouting under an oak tree. west of Austin. I loose some seedlings to the cold so this will cut down on that. Some seeds really do not need wintersowing here. I just need to know which is which. I will learn through trial and error. I haven't really been over to the wintwersowing site or the forum. I have heard people talking about it and read an article and so I just did it without a lot of fuss. But thats how I do most things. I am probably doing it wrong or at the wrong time, or something. I might only be approximating wintersowing.

I've done it on/off for a few years. I can't think of any seeds I tried that failed. All sprouted and grew but I'm not sure we have any great advantage doing it here other than getting the seeds to sprout early. I have never done veggies though.......I start them indoors and have a light system or I buy them or I plant them outdoors.

This year I will be doing a more precise experiment with some of my friends to see if there is a real advantage doing it here. I did enjoy it though. It gave me dirt time when it was too nasty to be outside so if you long for gardening in the winter, I would say "go for it".

The best part is that it provides a rather regulated environment for the seeds so that you don't have to spend much time checking on them. If there's water vapor on the sides of the container they are damp enough. I had mine on a shelf on the east side of the house so they wouldn't get drenched or blown away with our crazy spring weather.

I'm just west of Fort worth and I did a few milk jug (and other containers). This year I'm going to do a few more. I had great luck with it last year. I don't know if I really needed the winter part of winter sowing, but it was good on space and I didn't have to worry about losing seeds with direct sowing.

I did cleome (they need a little bit of cold and I had hundreds of them come up),
shasta daisy did well and were one of the first to come up (hoping for blooms this year),
purple coneflower did well--they take a while to come up, but they did,
datura did well
Red hot poker came up (not as much luck in the garden though)
Chinese lanterns came up
balloon flower (although they did seem to die off--may have uncovered too early--same goes with the butterfly bush
Larkspur did great with winter sowing and the later growing.
allysum did well as did the sweet william
I never did get the gaillardia to sprout, although that could have been the seed--I did get quite a few in a swap.
I also did some other annuals (like marigold, sunflowers), but waited until about feb or march to do it.
I can't remember what others I did, but it seems that they all did well. Where I'm at, we seem to have an iffy January, a warm February and then a cold March. The jugs and other lids just kept the little sprouts warmer during March.
Good luck with yours. I'll probably start sometime after the new year (or when I get all the Christmas stuff down. I participated in a swap and it seemed most of the seeds came from up north. We'll see how well they do in our heat.
Alison