I'll start most of my tomatoes indoors. I want to be one of the first with ripe tomatoes in my family. My dad lives 100 miles south in zone 8, so for me to have a fresh tomato in early June just eats him up. He usually gets his first around the 4th of July.

None for me inside.

I did horrible with inside seed growing! No matter how many times I tried I had very little success. That is why WS'ing was such a neat idea to me.

I guess the most successful for me was the year I did hot peppers under lights. It was a horrible mess though and I had a lot of loss because I am just HORRIBLE and growing under lights.

I skip the inside ones but I know many people do some inside. I am close to doing some tomatoes in my unheated garage. It may help them germinate faster but I would have to take care of them more.

WS is my favorite!

I started some dill, basil and not sure what the other 2 are, wanted chives or curled parsley, do not have good luck with chives, the regular kind not the garlic ones. Those were under my lights just to see what would happen. My lights aren't strong enough or I should change the timer to 18 hours, but they're older seeds and still germinated.

In the past I've started with mixed success marigolds, salvia, viola, petunias (lost those) in the sunroom. Many, many failures over the years, am a little better with some of it now.

I only need a few tomatoes and peppers so I'll probably start those inside.

If I put them under my lights, everything has to be the same height to work, a nuisance.

If I put them in a sunny window, it works best in the south, open the inside and keeping the storm shut, set them down in the well, then turn every couple days. Anything else and they grow leggy and or crooked. And I have 4 south windows in the sunroom.

I've direct sowed tomatoes in the past, you lose days, but it works. Also if I didn't get to it, I direct sow stuff in my planters like marigolds and petunias. I just do what seems best at the time.

When I have a proper greenhouse that I can control climate in at home, I will start seeds in there. For now (and since this forum started, and I "met" Trudi here) I only start seeds outdoors.
I did however try some cuttings indoor this year, just to get a jump on some things. We'll see if it works....

The only thing I started indoors last year was castor bean "Zanzibar". I had grown it very successfully the year before, but it didn't set seed. I guess being a semi-tropical plant, it needed a longer season.
My plants last year were not as large, due to our sunless summer, but they matured enough to flower and seed.
Otherwise, it's w/s for everything!

I only start tomatoes, peppers and castor beans inside and they aren't started under lights but on a heat mat in the cold frame with only natural lighting. I don't have enough "sun" days for them to mature when I wintersow them.

I tried seeds indoors years ago- with just window light- and failed miserably. Last year I tried overwintering coleus cuttings which did well until days grew short. I finally bit the dust and bought one shelf system and fluorescents. The cuttings did great after that.

I got brave and tried a few seeds under lights. I did Yvonne's salvia and they did well. Coleus (which was just too slow when wintersown) did well too. I have a few of those seeds starting now. I did tomatoes inside last year too, only because our spring was so cold, rainy and wet last year. They did well too. This year I'll take cues from the weather- if spring is nice and warm, I'll wintersow tomatoes. If it's like last year, I'll do them under lights.

I wintersow almost everything. I just play with a few seeds inside. Mostly I use my lights to propagate cuttings and overwinter them.
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Karen

My light shelf is now pretty full with coleus cuttings that are thriving. Also kept one tray of pelargoniums, doing great too.

Karen,
Where did you get your light system, it looks so sturdy?

sweetlady

None. I do everything by winter-sowing.

That's some mighty nice looking coleus, Karen! On one hand I wouldn't mind a little set-up like you've got, exactly for what you use it for - slow things like coleus and pelargoniums. But on the other hand I wonder if it would just be more work for me during the winter...

:)
Dee

Karen, I think I have that same set of shelves, I believe from Lowe's? I have the florescent lights, hung from chains, very similar, except for one thing - I don't have any plants on them any more! I need to take the lights off and use them for something else! I have not started seeds inside for the last few years since I started wintersowing.

Becky

None for me now. Used to sow indoors years ago.I am too cheap to let grow light burn for hours on end.

Karen, those coleus are gorgeous. Love the purple one.
I wonder if anybody in Chicago has that color??? Hint, hint, hint. :-)

Karen great set up!! the coleus is pretty.

Mone, If i get any coleus to sprout I will save some purple for you. My seeds have a pic on them like those.

Up here in MN the growing season is short so I've always done my peppers, tomatoes and most annuals indoors. All perennials are wintersown and a few hardy annuals.

I got the shelves at Home Depot, pretty cheap. It's on wheels which were optional. The lights are t5s. I got an incredibly good deal. They're very energy efficient, my husband says they don't seem to increase the electric bills at all.

Those coleus are the trailing kind, propagated vegatively, not from seed. I bought them from Rosy Dawn last year. They were wonderfully healthy big plants. I buy them through a coop at DG.

Karen

I will start a few tomatoes and hot peppers inside since our growing season is so short, but will also wintersow them. I am going to do one cell of lettuce inside, and that is about it. Everything else gets done outside and does well.

Thanks for all the responses! I will give the delphinium a try indoors, but I'm guessing from all of your feedback that I will become an even more devout wintersower by spring. I'm already feeling guilty about the amount of energy going to the lights...

capecat, hate to beat a dead horse, but I spring sowed one packet of 50 seeds in a McD's salad tray, slits in bottom for drainage holes (should have burned bigger ones) and covered with a few slits in clear cover. Think I used MG potting soil and mixed in a little special seed starting mix I have (light brown and fluffy). It helped to separate out the seedlings without damaging their roots although I always ruin a few transplanting.

I had them in the fridge for one day per instructions on pkt, and somebody on the perennials forum told me to take them out and set them outside in the shade. They germinated within 2 weeks or less. As soon as there are several germinated, I pop off the lid, mist and moved into slightly more sun, critical not to let them dry out at this stage.

By the time they got their second leaves, I had 25 or so so started transplanting into deep cell 6 packs. Usually set the tray back for more germination & transplanting but lost the rest, downpour.

Out of 25, I ended up with 15 I set in the ground last Sep early, bought two more packs of seeds, will do like I did last year because it worked so well for me. They never looked that great on the top, odd-weather, cool, rainy summer, but had good roots and put out a lot more healthy growth once I got them in the ground.

Here's another method I might try with some of my fresh seeds (kept at room temp since purchased last year like the ones B4). Scoop out a depression in ground, fill with potting soil, sprinkle a few seeds in a small circle, press or cover (per directions), cover with a soda bottle w/bottom cut out, cap on if frost threatens or very cool and overcast, cap off if sunny and warmer and leave off. If you see moisture in the bottle, you don't need to water. Water only when they start to look a little dry and pour around the bottle well.

When it seems safe to take the bottle off, be careful or you can uproot some seedlings, almost inevitable.

On another thread, several recommend WS'ing delphs. I would if I didn't know my spring method worked so well.

If I've bored you with this B4, pls forgive.

I covered my "babies" with soda bottles, caps off to try to buy them more time to settle in B4 winter. Freaky fall, 2 lighter frosts didn't get them, so I look and see one has put out a little bloom shoot. Just B4 a hard freeze/snowstorm on December 3, I clipped it off and put it into a boquet of my last blooms.

Out of that little cluster of buds, one burst into bloom 11 days later.

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In late fall I snipped a few of the last green sprigs off bacopa and put it in the garden window. It's slow growing and does well by propagation. The cuttings took off a few weeks ago and I've been cutting from the cuttings.

Those are the only things I'm doing inside(well, maybe a few tomatoes just in case. I don't have a light setup and the garden window only holds so much.)

Wow aliska12000. Thanks so much for your post and the photos. That is great infromation and really encouraging! I will definitely try your second method with the soda bottle. I like the idea of planting them where they are going to stay. When you do that do you start later towards spring, after the ground is generally going to stay unfrozen, or do you just wait for a thaw and get them in early?