Vegetables whose leaves and stalks you eat are best for those locations. Top performers, in descending order of sunlight needs: - small leaf brassica: arugula, mizuna, red mustard - large leaf brassica: lacinato, collard, kale - cardoon and celery (I have tried only the deep green, semi-wild variety) - carrots, radicchio, turnip, parsley and lettuce - chard, parsnip, chioggia beets Plants that tolerate some shade include rutabaga, onions and cabbage (reduced yields are always implied). Beets, garlic and potatoes do not tolerate much shade. For summer vegetables, those that do best in partial shade are zucchini and beans. Peppers and cukes are in fact more shade tolerant than their relatives. Tomatoes, watermelons, eggplants and melons are absolute no-no in shade. I am unsure about sweet potatoes and okra.

Jerry sorry about the delayed response hee hee been way to busy to remember where I post, lol. Some things that need a warm cool warm season like helebores I started those in september but I wonder if I was to late for those. Most of my containers I have started on december 21st to february. I have several things I need to get going but sometimes life just gets in the way, hopefully I will have time this weekend to get in the dirt. As for information the winter sowing forum has a ton of info under the faq's and then Trudi has a website also it is called wintersown.org. There are a ton of people willing to help with any question you may have in regards to winter sowing for the first time, though pretty much you have the concept down. I use water bottles but most use milk jugs. I use whatever I have, whether it be cottage cheese containers or grated cheese containers to water bottles or juice bottles. I think I have in the picture one of those rotisserie chicken containers that is in use also even an ice cream bucket. I use my containers as I would a starting seed tray, just make sure there is plenty of drainage and of course ventilation. For the water bottles we just toss the lid for the cottage cheese or rotisserie chicken containers we just cut some holes in the top. I have even used a lasagna pan inside a comforter bag. I have drainage holes in the bottom and I cut ventilation holes in the top. This is the most recent picture I have of the lasagna pan, I think it was taken a few weeks back. As for the pictures I know there is a link somewhere how to add pictures. Though a simple way to tell you is upload your pictures to a third party photo client. I have been using photobucket some use flikr. They will provide you with an html code and just simply copy and paste the code into the message box. inside the brackets > insert height="500" width="600" for the size of pictures here in this message. I sure hope that helps. People on the wintersowing forum are extremely eager to help and extremely friendly, they love questions don't be afraid of them. They will welcome you with open arms!! Oh and there are several from canada that winter sow!!

Well I guess I'm contributing to the hijack - sorry scraplolly! I used to live in a house with a driveway just like dtownjbrown and I hated it. So I was kind of interested in contributing to his story. You could think about mixing some evergreens in there. Microbiota, dwarf chamaecyapris, pencil holly, rug or pencil junipers, etc. But they are kind of dull in a row... Another way to go about this is to plant annuals for a few years to see what responds to the lighting. I would think you could grow coleus, petunias, maybe even an indeterminate tomato - cherry tomatoes, the italian plum tomatoes. I grow them in less than optimal sun in containers. My favorite is San Marzano - good for salsa. This year I'm growing calladiums in full sun planters so go try some new things - you never know what will work. Sometimes the repeated annual amendment helps also. Your soil looks good in the picture but who knows how old it is? You say it drains quickly- its possible that somewhere along the way somebody re-waterproofed and improved the drainage down deeper. When we had our back wall re-waterproofed they dug down 11 ft and then filled the space with limestone to about 2 ft from the top - then backfilled my topsoil on top of that. The space right up against my house is very dry as a result. A good resource for you would be the Botanical Gardens in the area - just do a search. Another good resource is the Plant Search function at MOBOT - Missouri Botanical Gardens. For ex. I just searched on Full sun to part shade, Dry to medium, 6-12 inches spread, Zone 3 for scraplolly and got a list of plants back - http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/Results.asp I don't know if you want anything to hang out over the line of the bed into your driveway but I'd think about that as you select plants.(daylilies)Whacking the flower heads every time you drive in has a tendency to look kind of ugly. The above was in case you don't like my idea: Given the narrow space and lighting my personal recommendation would be to plant a unifying ground cover like pachysandra which is evergreen, make space intermittently to have a few clumps of daffodils/tulips and alliums in spring and then have a nice white lattice structure just covered in green ivy to cover the wall. I would have parts of the lattice go up 6-8 ft and parts down at the level your siding begins. - sort of like the silhouette of a town. I would use horizontal and vertical crossbars rather than the cheaper looking diamond shaped criss cross pattern. You need to fasten it so that it is out from the siding about 1.5-2 inches for long term home care. You don't want ivy putting tendrils into your siding or cement. Where you live you might succeed with Boston Ivy which is very colorful in the fall. An alternate might be grapes or hydrangea petiolaris which I doubt would be watered at all after established. I could see having round blue ceramic planters filled with colorful coleus and impatiens set right down into the pachysandra with the wall of green ivy behind them. To give more space you could have cutouts in the latticework to center the planter in the space. You could have a small water fountain on the wall among the vines - or frame it with the lattice. Another planter idea is pruned boxwood with annuals/trailing vines around them for summer - and you can do something with them for the holidays. You should be able to have Korean, Vardar Valley, Green Mountain, etc live in a container if you keep pruned. The Blue Girl holly also does well in low light/bright sun but you'd really have to stay on the pruning to keep a holly in bounds. I would also try some unobtrusive stick in the ground solar lights to create a soft glow after dark along the drive or you can wire lighting in. I get container combination ideas every yr from the White Flower Farms catalog - gorgeous stuff altho this yr they were too in love with bronze and orange combos. Shrubs that I have kept pruned for yrs to 12 to 18" wide are taxus, boxwood and believe it or not - euonymous - burning bush. I have a 3 ft deep bed along my house and its underplanted with pachysandra and the burning bush are at least 20 yrs old - you just have to keep up with the pruning to keep them to the size you want.

Karl the best tool for measuring sunlight is 3D Studio Max, hahaha! seriously! In the architectural industry we have to do sun studies all the time. For designing ballparks and stadiums sunlight studies are very! crucial to make sure the sun does not "blind" the players. Sunlight can also affect landscaping design as well when designing for sports arenas, etc. For the 3D program we use, you put in a virtual reality sunlight, a compass, use a pull down menu for the times and locations that calculates even daylight savings as well. But yeah, not practical unless you want to spend $12,000 bucks for one licensed program, hee-hee. I've also got an older version of the program at home myself, so it makes it eaaaasy for me. I wish I thought about using it before I impulsively jumped into roses, LOL!