Welcome to winter sowing. I am also a newbie and have found the people here to be very supportive. I will let someone with more winter sowing experience answer your questions.

I encourage you to set up your trade page. If you don't know how just ask. You don't need a lot of seeds to get started.

Bachelor Buttons are good to go now, I would wait on the marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, nasties, and MGs. Not sure about the rest. Good luck with your wintersowing.

What Garden luv said.

Hi! I'm new too :) I just sowed my 1st containers yesterday actually.

I would think morning glories would be okay since I get tons of seedlings every year from the previous year's vines so if mother nature can winter sow I think you'll be okay too :) I also think sweet pea are okay (I say this because I started mine yesterday) and I read they like the cold.

it's a lot to start a ton of differnt seeds at once anyway, they take up containers then you might think. I sowed 14 containers of only 5 different seeds, so I won't be doing any more until I round up more containers. I found the lists of what seeds to WS by zone in the FAQs very helpful too.

Good Luck!

First, welcome!

I spotted those seeds and posted about them a couple weeks ago. That was a great deal!

I don't remember all I picked up, about a dollar's worth, seems not quite as large an assortment as you found, but I got my Sweet William, 2 pkts of it. Also got Canterbury Bells and coleus, couple more I can't remember. I don't even know if I like coleus well enough to plant it this year; I save some for next year usually anyway, most still germinate at least some.

Most of what is on your list either wasn't there or I didn't want it. Several you list I'd already bought plenty online.

The seeds said they were packed for this year so assume they're fresh, too, think mine are American Seed Co.

You should be good to go on these too (I've did mine this weekend after successfully doing them this early last year):
bachelors button
sweet pea
forget me not
african daisy

It's my first year winter sowing too! Thanks to another Winter Sower, I discovered these Winter Sowing Germination lists based on Zone the other day on the Wintersown.org website (I put the link for the Zone 5 list below).

Checking out the zone 6 list helped me figure out when to sow some new seeds this month. Looks like most of the sweet pea entries for Zone 5 say the seeds were sown in March or April. I'm sowing my sweet peas today in Zone 6.

Good luck & have fun!

Here is a link that might be useful: Winter Sowing Germination in Zone 5

I just stuck some sweet pea seeds in the ground one spring in front of the stoops by my front steps, didn't have the right things for them to climb on but improvised as best I could. One side didn't do so well, but the other really nice, tried to keep them watered. They wanted so badly to climb higher but just couldn't. No nicking. No soaking. Plus I think they were a few years old. Easy.

There are pots there now, work much better. I love sweet peas though.

The plants that really thrive in warmer weather, and if you bought them at a garden center you would put them in once the ground is pretty warm, you would winter sow them late or spring sow, but still using the container method. Those would be zinnias, sunflowers, salvia. Although, if you think about it, sunflowers can reseed, and if they do in your area, then they have shown you they can go thru a cold winter and will know when to germinate.
Laurie

My grandma had them for a long time on a wire fence, but that was B4 all the new varieties. I don't know for sure, but they may have come back every year for her.

I would have remembered if mine had set seed, think they didn't make it thru the Aug heat where I had them and soil hard as a rock there even though I dug B4 planting.

Fun while they lasted, would like more but no good sunny place for them to climb and don't care for the non-climbing ones.