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who is winter sowing?
What are you sowing this year? What are you most excited about?
I'm pretty excited to grow lots of seed I collected from my Mom's garden when I got to visit her this past summer for the first time in years (usually it is a winter holiday when we visit). Lots are a bit experimental, like clematis and panicle hydrangeas. Some have been very successful in the past, like bleeding heart. It was just a wonderful time walking around her garden and collecting the seeds. Planting seeds that have memories attached and growing flowers from them is a very special thing.
I've also had hybrid hellebore seeds in jugs since the summer (lid off in summer obviously) and I hope they germinate in the spring.
I wish we didn't have our privacy issues here because I'd love to do a seed swap.
This year, I finally managed to think of sowing chili in time (it's germinated now, but since I have no plant lamp, I am not sure how it will fare) Very excited about it.
What I also definitely want to try is beans, corn, spaghetti beans and perhaps okra. (Never tried to grow okra before, don't even know if I like the taste, but it's allegedly happy in high temperatures, which is what we increasingly get in summer. Normal beans don't set fruit because it's too damn hot! Spaghetti beans/Vigna sesquipedalis/yardlong bean did very well in the heat, but I'd started them too late so that they died before I could get a real harvest. This year I'm gonna try sow earlier.)
Gardening with climate change is a challenge!
I am trying to deal with it by using corn varieties bred by Carol Deppe (great garden book author!) that deal well with not being watered and varieties of corn that ripen in a short time, like Yucon Chief, to minimize the risks.
Probably I will try carrots again, though I never succeed. I had very limited success even with the famously hardy Swiss carrot variety used in the famed carrot cake. The slugs like them, too. 😬
Vegetables and beans are a whole different challenge! I don't know much about them because I grow ornamentals mainly, but I am dipping my toe into some hot peppers this year. Have you tried the "winter sowing" method with recycled milk jugs or other containers if you don't have an indoor growing system? That's what I do. I've seen people on YT who germinate their vegetables this way, but not sure what your zone is?
Carrots are particularly hard to grow! I grew them years ago and they'd seem to be doing ok but when I went to pull them they were undersized and tasted of nothing. We have so many slugs in my current garden that I couldn't think of it.
I haven't tried that method yet - do you cut the jug in two, put the seed in and tape them back together, or how does that work? (We don't have plastic milk jugs here, it's either glass bottles or waterproofed cardboard, so I am not sure what exactly you are describing)
Weather is relatively warm here, so I might risk some winter sowing of ornamentals in pots outside. 🤔
As of yet, I had better success with ornamentals than veggies, but even with ornamentals, I suck at growing them from seed. Somehow, they wither and die at some point before they really get going. And that's if I manage to water regularly enough so that they germinate at all.
(Any advice on how to grow poppies? They grow wild in fields all the time, so realistically cannot be hard to grow, but I fail at it all the time. Perhaps trying to transplant them was the mistake those times where they did germinate? But, with the slugs, I don't dare direct seed.)
You can use any plastic container for winter sowing (doesn't have to be a milk jug) as long as you can add drainage holes or slits to the bottom and it has a lid of some sort you can reattach but have some holes in to let in moisture and vent a little. I use leafy green containers like this when I have them, too, and they work really well.
The virtue of winter sowing is that it gives you the cold stratification period outside (less helpful if you're in a warm zone obviously) and also that they're in mini greenhouses, so the humidity tends to be just where you need it for seed germination. Since they're already growing outside you don't have to harden them off, so you get very healthy plants, typically.
I've grown oriental poppies before in winter sowing jugs. They germinate very well this way. I haven't had any luck direct seeding them because of slugs, as you said, though some people seem to succeed with it. I would just transplant them to a larger pot as soon as you can prick them out to grow on a bit before you put them in your garden (because slugs), trying not to disturb the roots too much. I never up-pot to more than a 4" pot for perennials--once they're bursting from a pot that size they want to be in the garden. I don't have great conditions for poppies because my garden is shaded and tends to be wet, so I've let them fall to the wayside, but if you have full sun and well draining soil you should be able to grow them.