Propagation: Winter Sowing, 1 by cbrandenburg

cbrandenburg wrote:
Last year I used flats that 6 pack plants came in, I lined them with black plastic and made some holes in the plastic to drain, then I sectioned them into 6 sections using cardboard. The only problem with this was we had so much snow that the soil compacted down to about 1 1/2"s, but the seeds still germinated and grew. This year I am going to use 4" pots in my flats, I did this with spring sowing and they worked much better. I have also discovered that it's better not to sow seeds so heavy handed, I had so many seeds germinate it looked like moss on top of the soil. So I am going to sow more 4" pots with few seeds in each. I use Promix to plant my seeds in. I planted several varieties of clematis seeds last year, but only had 4 varieties germinate. I believe the other seeds were not seeds at all, mostly fluff. Clematis seeds are large and most people sent fluff but I planted them anyway and no germination. The morning glories I think are to tender to winter sow early, they do germinate well, but to soon. But that's the wonderful thing about winter sowing, you learn so much. And the best part there is no dampening off. Seeds that germinate outside are so much hardier than the seeds started in the house. I was looking at the daylilies that I planted in September from winter sowing and some of them have started to send up another fan, I am hoping for some blooms for next year, but it might take a couple of years. No hurry, I will be winter sowing another batch of daylily seeds this winter. I have several pictures of my winter sown plants that bloomed this year, I'll post some for you guys to see. The picture is a hardy yellow hibiscus that I winter sown, I had 4 germinate. Cathy