medontdo,
If you don't want to do wintersowing, you really ought to be posting this on the Greenhouse Gardening forum...

Here is a link that might be useful: Greenhouse forum

i am ws now, but i have things that won't be ws. i mean , aren't there things you can't ws?? like tender annuals and such?? from what i've been reading and all. and to tell ya the truth i LOVE this forum, i hesitate to go to any other one. :'))

You can wintersow tender annuals, you just need to wait until it warms up some more and there is no danger of them being killed by frost.

The question becomes not can one winter sow annuals but how early one wants blooms. Some hardy annuals will bloom early for me, bachelor buttons are one example. Others will bloom later than the ones that are bought in a nursery, impatiens are a good example. I winter sow my impatiens and don't mind waiting until mid to late June for blooms. For my container gardens which I want to look great in the spring I use either plants that I have started inside or that I have gotten at a nursery.

I am starting some tomatoes inside as well as winter sowing a few as we have such a short season in MN and I want early tomatoes. The fluorescent lights under shelves in my basement laundry room are full of plants that are being over wintered. Those plants will go to the garage as soon as possible in March to give me space to start a few seedlings. Since I do not have a greenhouse or cold frame the tomatoes will go out in Walls of Water in early April. Our last frost date is May 15.

If you want early bloom or production then the money spent on a greenhouse, cold frame, or other equipment may be worth it to you. That can only be decided by the individual.

medontdo, I used to think too that those annuals had to be sown inside, but then I found out on here that you can ws them, just not as early as the perennials. I plan on sowing my annuals on March 1. I don't have nearly as many annuals to sow as I did perennials, so I know I'll be able to get them all done that day. I don't know about you, but I don't have a whole lot of space inside to put plants, so this ws the beginning of March seems like a good solution.

mnwsgal, So do you put your ws tomatoes in the walls of water and the ones planted inside you plant out in the garden the regular way...or the other way around? I heard of those walls of water and might try them someday. Do they really make a lot of difference? About how tall are they? So do you just keep the tomato stalks in them for a short period of time, eg. a month and then remove them? I'm guessing that's the case because I can't picture how they would work with tomato stalks. I put mine in 4-tier tomato cages last year and they got so tall that I thought they could probably use another tier or two if they even made such a thing, but I supposed they'd cost as much as the tomatoes are worth. My tomato stalks got pretty tall, like maybe 4 feet, and I'm not sure a big tomato stalk would be able to be supported by a wall of water, or maybe you somehow use both the cage and that WOW? I think it would be great to be able to use them all season because when I grew my tomatoes last year and October rolled around with frost, of course, despite my covering the tomato stalks they still froze. Had I known that it was going to be a waste of time covering them, I wouldn't have bothered. It wasn't even a hard frost that killed them! I wonder if that's common.

caterwallin, the WOW are only as tall as a 5 gallon pail. They are used to keep the seedlings from freezing and once the weather warms they are removed. I use a tomato cage that I made from rebar wire or a bamboo pole for the tomato to climb. The WOW will be used with the tomato plants that have been started inside. Last year I winter sowed tomatoes on 4-11 and had sprouts on 4-19. This year I will winter sow some earlier. It's fun to experiment. When the fall frosts come I pick the tomatoes and keep them in a cool room and use them as they ripen through December.