Back on March 15th I posted about my experiment with winter sowing.
The concept is simple. You take seeds, plant them in a little mini-greenhouse made from recycleables (such as the milk and vinegar jugs I used) water them well, then put them outside to brave the freeze/thaw cycles of your winter. When the seeds are naturally ready they will germinate and grow, earlier than you would be able to put them in the ground naturally. Then you gradually increase the size of the ventilation holes until they are hardened off.
Although these plants start out smaller than nursery bought annuals, they are supposed to catch up fairly quickly in growth.
Here is how some of mine turned out! Here are what the flats look like all together.
And here are some closeups of a few of them. First I am showing the Dwarf Petunias that I spent an hour or so separating out from the mass of seedlings and planting in their own individual cells. I hope to plant these out in the flower beds today-if they catch up in size and bloom to the ones you can buy in the stores I’ll have saved a ton of money!
This is a container filled with a mass of Dwarf Petunias that haven’t been separated. . . 
And here are sweet peas, pinks and something else I can’t remember right now.
Of course the true proof is how it all looks when they are planted out and the flowers bloom, but I am very encouraged at this point. If this is successful DH won’t be able to walk on our deck next winter for all the flowers I’ll have winter sown out there.
Jenn, congrats. Hope your garden grows very well. We started sunflowers on the porch this year and are going to put them in the ground soon.
Also, no more pop ups! Thanks!
Glad the pop-ups are gone. Hopefully they stay gone 🙂
I just hope my little plants make the transition from container to ground ok. I bought a bunch of compost from a local farm that I will be adding to the flower beds (I don’t know if they’ve ever had ANY ammendments added) to try to help everything get a good start.
Wow…look at that! I’m definitely going to try it next year. Now I can wait to see the mature plants–including the “something else I can’t remember right now.” But isn’t that half the fun of gardening…forgetting what you planted and getting a big surprise?
M2F-I remembered-it is candy tuft. I don’t have a really good idea what that or the pinks look like, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough!
Candy Tuft–gotta love that name! I recently planted freesia in my front yard. My daughter, a florist, says that it smells like Froot Loops. We’ll see!