There ARE advantages of winter sowing verses direct sowing though, Kay. Direct sown seeds can get blown away, washed away, eaten by birds or bugs. By sowing them in a container, you may not gain a lot as far as the bloom date, but you have more control over the germination process as a whole. Tomatoes and peppers are about the only things I may sow some of indoors. All of the cool season veggies and herbs will be WS, along with all of my perennials, and annuals. The annuals won't be sown until March or early April, and yes the blooms will be a little behind the nursery bought plants, but the plants will be stronger and many will bloom well past the first frost. For those of us that don't have room for sowing indoors, or have a green house, wintersowing allows us to still grow from seed. Primgal, I hope that you won't give up on growing from seed. It's just a matter of finding a way that works for you. We are all learning as we go. Happy sowing, Bonnie

Gardenweed, you're welcome, let us know how they do. I've been sowing the willow gentian that way most recently, oddly, from a pure deep blue flowered plant long established in my garden, I've gotten quite a few pure white flowering seedlings. Tiffy, willow gentian, happier than bottle gentian in my clay based soil with constant winter wet germinates great with the warm/cold/cool too, and the suggestions for g. lutea are similar, but then never say never. My own army of unexpected seedlings this year....Scrophularia nodosa aka figwort. The instructions from Chilterns with the seeds suggested very slow, try warm/cold/cool, weeks of all three. The Clothiers database said 41F, germ. irregular, often several months. I decided to give them a brief warm moist period indoors first (after all, what could it hurt) and then put them outside.... and the darned seeds germinated in about 8 DAYS under a skylight in my guest room. Now I'm stuck with caring for them until they can be hardened off when I hadn't planned on it :)

I agree you were able to buy fixtures subsidized by the utility at a good price. If I needed them I would have done the same. I am only responding to get your post moving after three weeks. Al

You can read what I did with lights in the following link if you didn't see it. We didn't lose one plant. Lighting is not complicated. Lamps are $7 for two 4' at Home Depot or Lowes. I used two balast and four bulbs in each fixture and kept them on 24/7 the first month two to four inches above the plants throughout growth. The tomatoes grew several inches a week with sturdy stems and bushy leaves. NO PLANT FOOD and too much water will turn your leaves yellow. All plants were raised under the lights and then rotated to the greenhouse. The pics of the lights were taken after almost all tomatoes and peppers were replanted and moved to the greenhouse. The tomatoes were over a foot high when rotated. There are a few smaller ones left in the pics along with the cucumbers and pumpkins. The sun was to much and bleached your plants. When we put the tomatoes in the greenhouse the outside temp was only hitting high fifties low sixties. I kept the temp in the greenhouse set at seventy night and day. The greenouse was pushed into the garage at night cause we were still getting nights in the thirties. We placed an old window drape cheese cloth type material on top of the greenhouse the first several days outside to prevent sun burn. Hope this helps. http://www.network54.com/Forum/616213/