Winter sowing

On the sweet potato thread there is a link to a gardening blog (brilliant one) which also has an old post about winter sowing. This seems to be sowing seeds in plastic containers and putting them out to take their chances.

Has anyone done this? And if so, would they recommend it?

See: I wet my plants

I am about to give it a try this year Ice. A blogging friend of mine has been doing this for about three years with apparently amazing success. She uses foil baking pans with plastic lids and starts all sorts of beautiful things.

Ray and I have had some kind of nasty flu. Last night we started feeling better, and if it holds we will make a trip to the nursery for a few packets of seed (parsley for the SFG, a few flowers and herbs to grace the rest of the garden.) I have a couple of containers from COSTCO (a mega box store in the US) that once held beautiful lettuce. I'm going to use them to start seeds. Catherine (the blogging friend) posted encouraging pictures and directions.

Have you decided to give this a try?
Deborah...ready for any adventure that does not involve being in bed with tissues.

Poor you and the flu!

I'm going crazy waiting for a sign of spring! So I thought I might give this a go with some left over seeds. Do you know if there is much need to ventilate the plastic containers? If I use plastic bottles, for example, when I replace the top half should the lid be on or off?

My guess would be off.

Did you know that there is a web page for winter sowing with how-to instructions....a good facebook page too.

You could start here (I am hoping this is OK, the plants are for the SFG)
Getting Started with Winter Sowing
Check the FAQ's for more good information.

Deborah...thanks for the poor me.

I cut a bunch of plastic containers to do this and my husband recycled them I read about it last year and it looks really interesting. The link you posted is the one I was looking at and it surely looks really easy!

L Debs....Its a very interesting concept. One I might try.
I like to save articles for my garden notebook but I find if I print the article itself, its often in print too tiny for my old eyes so I send it to myself.

First I highlite the part of the article I want to print.
Click Edit at the top of my screen
Click Copy
then I leave that site and go to my email address book.

I have myself in my address book specific for this purpose, to copy articles to send myself.

I find my address
click on my name to send myself an email
when the window opens, I enter a title on the Subject line, in this case Winter-Sown Seeds
then move my cursor to the space where I would normally starting typing my letter, and
click Edit above,
Then click on Paste
The article pastes into the body of my email.
Then I just click Send and send it to myself.
When I get it, I Print it.
It prints out nicely all across the page in a type that is suitable to read without a magnifying lens.
I hope this helps someone else with the same issues.

Thanks Deborah, that is a good link.

My husband (who would quite like to concrete the garden ) actually brought me a packet of blue columbine seeds from New Mexico. It sounds as though they would quite like to be frozen and thawed a bit so I'll put a few of those out. And pansies self-seed here so I think I could try those. For the SFG I might get some alpine strawberry seed as I fancy a few squares of those. This could be a lot of fun

Icemaiden wrote:snip ...."This could be a lot of fun "

I like the way you think!

Icemaiden.....Make sure you plant more than six Alpine strawberries.
I have 6 plants and I never even get a handful of berries at one time. They are very small, but tasty. Make sure you put in several.
I have six red and six yellow (pineapple flavor).
This is last April 19th whe nthey were just starting to blossom.
Here's some pineapple ones on May 26th.

This is my second year Winter Sowing herbs and vegetables. I use 2 and 3 liter plastic bottles. The cilantro and parsley are about an inch tall and the spinach is two inches tall now. Last year I left the lids on and drilled holes in the lids. This year I left the lids off so that I didn't have to remove them on a warm day. (I had some baked sprouts last year, live and learn!) I wish you great success!

Thanks happycamper. I hadn't thought of spinach, guess if I put that out then it will germinate as soon as it is ready which might be sooner than if I wait to get my boxes in shape. Good idea.

Nice pictures quiltbea I had alpines in a flower bed many years ago and they are so lovely to just eat as reward for pottering in the garden! I did not know about pineapple flavoured ones

So much to try, so little space/time/money

Argh! I was just on the way back from the recycling centre, feeling smugly green, and it dawned on me! I just recycled ALL the plastic bottles that I planned to sow seed in tomorrow

We feel for you

It sounds like something I would do