Trying Something New

Winter sowing in trays, stacked in layers

This year, I wanted to try a couple new ideas with our winter sowing. For those who haven't tried winter sowing, at its simplest, it is just planting your seeds during the winter to give them a jump on spring. Perennial seeds do well, some hardy annual seeds do okay, and tender stuff doesn't survive. 

One of the issues we have this winter is carryover from the spring/summer/fall. There are lots of pots of seeds that didn't germinate in the spring. A lot of the things I am reading about some of the more difficult seeds to start, indicate that it can take 2-3 years for seeds to germinate. And that also includes scarification/stratification of some form. Winter sowing usually makes that a simple solution, with the repeated freezing and thawing cycles. 

We picked up these flat blue trays on Facebook Marketplace. I have seen similar things in use for bread delivery. They are lightweight, rigid and affordable. Best of all, they are perforated so water just flows in and out of them. They came in mighty handy this fall when it came time to clean our dahlias. I could just toss 5-8 big clumps onto a tray, spray everything down with water and then leave it all to dry. Moved the whole rack inside once it was dry. Enabled me to do my dahlia dividing inside where my hands weren't so cold. 

Back to winter sowing...

What I am optimistic about is keeping critters from digging in the soil of the open containers. When the lids are on, the squirrels don't bother trying to get in there. Once the tops are open though, it can be a real mess. I have lost quite a few jugs to squirrels who dug right through a freshly germinating bed of some precious perennial. Poof! Gone. Hopefully these racks will help keep the little buggers out. 

Here is what our winter sowing looked like most winters for the past four years. Pretty straight forward. Milk/water jugs, bottom third sliced off, taped shut, and bottom is full of holes.
 

Eventually the snow acts like a lovely warm blanket.

 

 

Close up of what everything looks like right before adding seeds.

What do you do with all of your lids at the end of the season? String 'em up!

Some years, we have had more than 150 jugs out in the snow. This has enabled us to start a lot of perennials which have filled out into large pockets of the garden.

Why do I care about getting seeds started in the wintertime? 

Turns out, hardy plants do an awful lot of growing long before spring, if they have the opportunity. In fact, some perennials and shrubs will only germinate in harsh winter conditions. One of the plants I was incredibly excited to see this year was Baptisia. If you've priced a one gallon pot of nearly any plant in the garden stores in the last few years, you've seen the prices jump. Rather than give up, I started looking for sources of seed. Baptisia australis, the native (to the US) variety was very easy to come by. Finding other species forms (and other colors) took a little more doing. Eventually, I found some baptisia sphericarpa and baptisia minor. We'll see how those fare over the next few years.

Irises have been my other big plant in 2024. I planted seeds from a plethora of different iris species, including iris tectorum, iris lactea, iris versicolor, iris spuria, iris siberica, iris ensata... there were so many! This year, I am narrowing down my scope of irises that I hope to germinate. 

Seeing a one gallon jug with dozens of seedlings inside it is such a joy. It is a wealth of plants! Whether you plant them as hunk-o-seeds or if you take them out one by one and repot them to grow on... in the end, the resulting plants are affordable and exciting!