Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Winter sowing...fellow blogger Kim (a.k.a. Blackswamp Girl) has introduced me to the concept of
winter sowing and I have decided to give it a try. It may sound like I'm too late to begin this project, but my weather up here has taken a strange turn-temps are to plummet all week, and I could get up to 11" of snow! So it looks like there's plenty of "winter" left for my winter sowing trial.

So we begin with "Jiffy" brand pot pellets, "Fiber Grow" brand, and regular moistened coir. I planted a varied assortment of seeds, some I let soak overnight. Severla annual vines, an ornamental okra, twinleaf wildflower, and a couple different milkweeds. Planted them up, put in plastic bags, and placed them in my "overwintering" area with the potted stuff between the house and garage.
So now to hope and wait.....more winter? Bring it on!



5 comments:

OldRoses said...

What fun! Keep us updated. I have germination in 13 of my 20 containers.

Unknown said...

Cool! It's only fair that I've been a bad influence on you project-wise, too... I already have half of my worm bin created for next fall! :D

I'm going to start some more this week, too. It's never really "too late" to use that winter sowing method, btw. If it's something that needs cold strat, you just fake it with the refrigerator... and if it gets too sunny you move the pots to an eastern location instead of a southern one.

chuck b. said...

I haven't tried those peat pellets yet. Do you use them a lot?

Anthony said...

11 inches of snow! Yikes! I would be out buying a snow blower and you're planting seeds. :)

Good luck with the winter sowing.

lisa said...

Old Roses-congrats on your germination sucess...hope mine goes as well!

Kim-hey I enjoy your bad influence completely! Your worm bin will be fun-I look forward to posts!

Chuck-I've used peat pellets in the past with decent results, so I figured I'd compare brands and experiment with coir, too. (More ecologically sound since it's made from coconut husks and not depleting peat bogs.) Not truly scientific comparison here though, since I have different types of seed in each medium. So we'll see...

Anthony-yea, the snow is kind of a drag, but as of this morning, only a dusting. Hope it stays that way!