My only real tip is that if you are rural to semi-rural and have possums, coons, skunks and other varmints roaming around at night, put your jugs in a secure location where nothing (including field mice and voles) can get into them, dig up the seeds, eat them or later eat young sprouting plants, etc. Oh, and if you have free-range chickens, the same thing applies.

Yes what dawn says.

I have done this with great success. When I downsized to a camper I had no choice. It worked really well except one thing. I was not here to open and close jugs when they started growing and temps were changing. This year I will be. I am hoping to get mine done next week. Thanks for reminding me to get some good soil while in Denton. Happy sowing

It is a great way to plant perrineal seeds.

I try to keep a cutting garden going so I hope to get some perennial flowers going this way! :) And I'm just going to try some other stuff and see what happens.

I jumped the gun and set out a few last week, before our cold front moved in. Got a pile of containers & a basket of seeds ready to plant, just need a few more hours added to my day.

Yep! Great thing to do. :)

Jen, The days start getting longer again today, at least in terms of daylight. Today we will have 2 seconds of daylight more than yesterday. That's the start of the few more hours you need added to your day. (grin)

Just do what I do during planting season, and give up sleeping in exchange for gardening time. After a while, you barely miss the sleep you're not getting.

Seriously, I hope you get some time soon to work on your planting. Winter seems to fly by so quickly.

Dawn

Gee, thanks Dawn!

We should be done with Christmas by Sun, and I'm off Mon and Tue so I plan to do as much as possible then.

dbarron, Our weather is such a roller coaster ride lately. I guess that is great for perennials with really mixed scarification needs. They should be getting all the heat and cold they need, though maybe not in the right order. We're looking at really windy weather Sunday, and around 70 degrees. Who knows what comes next. I've been avoiding looking too far ahead in the forecast in case it all is about to go downhill again.

Hey, Jen, two extra seconds of daylight is two seconds after all. Use it wisely. (grin)

I bet you'll get a lot done on Mon and Tues. I know I plan to. I spent all day today doing Christmasy things when what I really wanted to do was to dig through the seed crate and pull out seeds to start.

If you have to be addicted to something, gardening is not the worst thing to be addicted to, and we're all gardening addicts here.

Lol that is true. I'm all ready for Christmas, now i can relax and enjoy those extra 10 amd 12 seconds on Mon and Tue.

Lol. See there. The daylength is increasing more rapidly now. Before long, it will be a whole minute longer.

I can feel it!

Ha ha ha! I don't know. Maybe we're all imaging it, but the pre-sunset sky was so pretty last night and it seemed like we got dark later, though I know we didn't really get dark that much later than the day before or even the day before that.

haha wishful thinking, there. :D

I know it was wishful thinking and today we paid for that by having a mostly all-day-long sort of foggy thing going on, so that it seemed to get dark even earlier than usual, making Christmas Eve seem really short this year. I suppose the endless drizzle, mist and fog are better than being hot and dry and having wildfires, but it should would be nice to see a little sunshine every now and then.

We went down to Ft. Worth for Christmas with my extended family down there and it was pretty hot for Christmas Eve---75 degrees at the time we left there in mid-afternoon to come home, and lots of sunshine. Once we were north of Denton we were back in the hideous fog that plagued our drive down to Ft. Worth early this morning.

My goodies, I opened the doors and windows this morning. Might be weird for xmas day, but ima enjoy it!

We're at 73 degrees already and it feels like April, including the winds gusting into the 30s, and our wind is light compared to winds further north/northwest. We've got to enjoy this lovely warm weather while it lasts, assuming it doesn't blow us all away.

Facebook meme: Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, the AC was on, cause we live in the south.

haha Yeup

I agree. We made it up to 76 and the AC actually is on. Ha ha ha. Welcome to Christmas and to winter in Oklahoma. I certainly did not wear a Christmas sweater today (or yesterday either).

Cool-season weeds, wildflowers and grasses are sprouting in the ground, both in the garden and outside of it. Just today I saw some that there are new sprouts compared to what was there just 3 or 4 days ago. 'Tis the season for cool-season stuff to sprout.

I'm planning on giving it a try myself. My husband tried fix up the greenhouse before he left (he'll be gone for a year with the military) but some of the high winds we've gotten between October and now have undone his work. This will be my first year wintersowing, but it's a must at this point.

He says he'll build me a more stable greenhouse in the near future. He's so good to me and my gardening addiction.

If it doesn't work, guess I'll be the person at the seed swap in April taking everything home.

Anyone wintersown onions or beets? My mom loved the 3 beets I got this fall, and is willing to chip in for containers and mix so I can grow as many as I can for her.

Since both are cold tolerant species, I think it would probably work. The problem might be that dependent upon the onions, they might not get started well enough to bulb before bolting (due to temps and/or daylenght). There's a reason we buy onion sets that are probably oh...three months old to plant out in February.

Beets really don't require it, and to do it successfully you would need to transplant your beets out. It's much easier to just direct sow them 2-3 weeks before last frost. They're ready in 75 to 90 days.

I've never done either though in wintersow methods...so...

Rebecca, I have overwintered onions from seeds inside a cold frame. They were germinated in September and planted in early October. Pulled in NOvember (no bigger than a pencil-sized neck or they'll bolt the next year). They were transplanted to the garden in spring. That year these were plowed over. Some survived. I found them while gardening the newly plowed area. These were very healthy and tough onions!

You make me wonder if they would have enough time to grow from seed starting now, provided I grow them in a cold frame. I don't have much space, so I'll buy dixondale, but I do wonder. They take a couple weeks to germinate.

Well, now you all have done it. I was only planning for the veggie garden so far and forgot about wintersowing. I have about 8 jugs I believe but need to grab some good dirt.

Kate, what type of flowers did you wintersow? I have quite a few seeds that I would love to start and it would be so much easier doing it this way. I am planning on a variety to bring in more bees and butterflies.

Is it too late to wintersow? I mean we are talking about Mother Nature, who apparently has lost her mind.

Hi Melissa! My umpteenthousand jugs are ready, but I won't put seed out until mid to late January. Of course, that's if Mother nature's mental illness is in remission.

I have some flowers (coneflower and black eyed susan, e.g.) and my garlic cloves in the frig, cuz I wanna be sure they get enough cold. Never know...

That's why I usually start in Dec, to make sure they get enough (like last year...non-winter)...but I think we'll have enough this year.

As far as flowers go perennials like winter sowing, annuals are usually warm weather germinators. When I winter sowed tomatoes I did them in March so they wouldn't do the Sprout and get Frozen thing. I would start annual flowers that way, too. It seems like I wnter sowed leeks one year, but my memory is foggy. (I don't reccomend it, BTW, because leeks do better in fall here. If the chickens don't dig them up.)

Ok please forgive me here bcz I forget some of the names that go with the usernames. chickencoupe.......that's Bon, right?! If not, so sorry.

What kind of dirt do you all use? Anything special?

Amy, thanks for the insight on perennials and annuals. I usually don't plant annuals or even start seeds unless I already have them in my seed stash. Planting annuals makes me feel like I am throwing money away. I'd much rather plant perennials that come back each year. It's an investment in my opinion. I guess you could save seeds from annuals, but again....for me, it's just a waste of money that I could spend elsewhere.

I do have some crepe myrtle seeds that I am planning on starting. I got quite a few from my new little bush. Hoping to get at least about 5 bushes going. I have to get some shelves for the patio since little Lilo likes to pull the seedlings up and run laps around the yard with them. I had 10 hibiscus seedlings....gave 2 to a neighbor and then Lilo demolished the others sadly. So I need shelves to keep her away from them when I want to move my seedlings outside. Otherwise, Lilo and I might go to war, lol.

I have been saving paper towel holders so I can cut them into smaller pieces and use them as pots. I am also going to use the small paper cups. I think I'm going to get a shorter, clear plastic container with a clear lid. I'll pop small holes sporadically in the bottom for drainage. I'm also going to label the top of the lid with what I have inside and then put clear packing tape over it before I even up it outside. I did this before and it worked pretty well.

Well, if we're talking wintersowing, I tend to use a light well drained mix, basically std peat based potting soil with extra perlite (15% more or so) and I've started adding (because I have it from making gritty mix for an aloe), crushed granite chips (15% more too). I think it'll do well for me...I'm adding enough depth (2 inches or 3) that water retention should be pretty good though will not remain soggy.

Yep. I'm bon. I'm like dbbarron, but in my own way. You remind me about perlite which I used once and BOY is that great stuff!

I like to fill the bottom of the jugs with soil from the garden that I know is well worked and amended with compost. This way the roots are not shocked with a serious change at the time of transplanting.

Then, top the jug off with some of my own seed starter or with peat moss. My thinking is that the seedlings will start in the soilless medium. As it grows, the roots will stretch down to the nutrient soil that has a bit of clay to retain moisture. The roots should hit the nutritious soil right about the time it needs it the most - around 2 weeks. I'm frugal, too, so I make use of the soil in the jug by overseeding and thin them out at transplant time (or after transplant if it is something that doesn't like to be transplanted, because there's always failures). If it's easy peasy to transplant plants, I just pick up the entire chunk and plop it down into the prepared bed.

bon

Last year, I successfully transplanted asclepias speciousa. Milkweeds are notorious about transplanting...dying if the tap root is broken. I transplanted at the 2nd leaf stage and didn't lose a one. Transplanting when small is easy, if you can handle the plant at all.