PV what a great story. I have started from seeds indoors a couple times. this year I was struggling because I kept killing off my indoor seedlings. So I stopped lurking here in the WS forum and tried it! I am so excited.

Other than my WS seeds I have only been able to grow seeds in container once. I sowed a ton of herb seeds into 2 large pots one year and had a bunch of herbs.

So for me WS this year will be the most I have grown by seed so far.

Some of my neighbors have teased me a bit but those are the ones that come by and tell me they like my plants etc. So I don't pay attention to them at all.

I am hooked on WS and I wish when I lurked here before I had decided to try it then cause I would have saved myself a lot of money, the trouble, the dead seedlings and all the mess in my basement!

Karen

1/2 green, 1/2 brown thumb before discovering WS in 2005.
Nobody but my mother understands me, and they will say to my face how great I do at gardening, but yet still can't get past the weird milk-jug "thing."
But I work with engineers, too. They simplify nothing.

When I was about 9 or 10, I started acorn squash from seed in my mom's flower bed. It wasn't until 2004 when I found winter sowing that I was able to germinate another seed. Thank you Trudi!!

PV, you are such an inspiration! Not only for your neighbors, but for me as well. I love looking at the pictures you post, and for someone who is "square-foot challenged" it gives me hope.

i was not a gardening person before 2007.

i started with planting bulbs in autumn, i did not plant deep enough and squirels ate those.

Then in summer i bought 2 packets of cosmos seeds, i dug 120 holes, neatly and quite deep and planted those seeds exactly 3 seeds in each hole, covered thoroughly watered too much. not even a single plant came out.

then i bought marigolds from supermarket and planted those. my friend laughed at my gardening hobby :(

i started reading about gardening and bought dahelia, impatiens, some compost, plant food etc. it all seedmed so costly.

then i came across wintersowing forum. WOW! that changed my life! i did some summer sowing, then some autumn sowing and now my first wintersowing going on.

Hello,

I have been a gardener all my life. It is my escape from the real world. But other then planting corn out in the garden I haven't had luck with seeds. If I got them to sprout then I soon killed them. So normally I divide or root and didn't think it was really worth my time to start little seedlings anyway. Well this winter when I haven't had any gardening outside I could do and started to really hang out on gardenweb I came across ws and since I have lots of seed for my sisters thought I'd give it a go. WOW!! Now, I have a whole new obsession and my DH really thinks I have lost it. I play in my jugs all day and have all my family and friends saving their jugs for me. Just can't wait until summer when a lot of things start blooming and hopefully DH will get the WOW factor. :O)
Pattie

My dad started my gardening bug way, way back as a young girl when he let me help in the garden by planting some white radish seeds. Another time a neighbour gave me a slip of her plant--impatient I think. When I got married, I planted daffs in the little patch of dirt beside the door of our apt.....moved before they got to grow. :)
As much as I want a garden, it just didn't seem the same when I bought plants. I just have this "need" to see them come from that tiny seed. Now having said that, I was lousy at that part..no room to get them started inside so had to pick and choose a couple of plants each year and then only had room for a couple of containers of each...not even those neat trays of cells--they don't fit on a window sill! :)
A few years ago I finally got the sunroom on the back of the house and that improved the chances of my couple of little pots actually surviving----lots of light so they didn't stretch up and then finally keel over, as they always used to do.
I was still frustrated as I still wanted to grow MORE!!
I had thought of just planting out directly but never did as I wasn't confident enough to believe that it would work.
I am not sure how, but one day I just happened on info about wintersowing and the light bulb went on.!!!! I remember sitting there reading about it and almost hyperventilating-(with excitment! :)) as I was reading. I just kept saying yes!!wow!! hurray!!
I couldn't get to it fast enough. I was nervous (about my ability to follow the directions properly), but I plunged in.
Last year was my first year and although not everything worked out, I had plants! Lots more than I ever thought I could grow in a year. I learned a lot. I found out that the containers don't have to be perfectly cut in order for the seeds to grow. The tape doesn't have to be "straight" and it is okay that the soil isn't the "exact" same depth in each container. lol! I hope to learn even more this year to use next year. I love this!!
I pour over the site and look at all the pics, over and over. I have definitely been inspired to plant things I never would have tried before and to plant in containers more also (thanks PV! :))

The only seeds I planted before this year have been some easy to sow flowers that people have given me randomly. WS is really so exciting, isn't it?

Gardening history -- when we bought our house in '98 we got a yard and I was so excited about the garden but really ignorant. Just do things the hard way. Lots of mistakes. Mostly I've planted bulbs and store bought plants. I get so sad when they die. Then 2001 to last year so many family/health issue that I almost completly stopped gardening -- luckily most of my shrubs & perennials survived.
The late last fall I heard about lasagna gardening and that got me thinking maybe I could grow veggies ... found the compost forum at gardenweb, then heard about the WS forum because of that funny thread about those x-rated plants!
Then I got hooked!

When I was a teenager, my father ripped out the leggy, half-dead shrubs along the front of the house, and it looked bare, so each summer I would buy a couple of flats of shade loving annuals to plant there. Once I got married, the first couple of homes we lived in were rentals, so I wasn't going to invest a lot of money in landscaping, so I continued to buy a few annuals to plant in already established beds. When we finally bought our first home, I dug up the sunniest spot in the backyard, and planted a vegetable garden from seed. I was so excited that everything germinated and grew, but we were in a heavily wooded area, so almost everything got eaten by the squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and slugs. After a couple of years of not much harvest, I gave up.

Then we moved from Tennessee to Colorado. I started some peppers, basil, and carrots from seed in the kitchen windowsill, then grew them in pots on the decks with decent success. Even grew some Cosmos and Gaillardia from direct sown seeds, and gradually started making some small changes to the established landscape.

It wasn't until we moved again, this time to a brand new home with no landscaping that things started to change. My husband and I discussed where to put flower beds, how big they should be etc. We had a landscape guy put in the sprinkler system and sod, but I did all of the rest, researching what to put in the beds, which led me to the Rocky Mountain Gardening forum when I was looking into xeric plants. Everyone there was very helpful, but the initial plantings were all store bought or mail order perennials. It wasn't until I asked a question on the Perennial forum, or maybe it was the Growing From Seed forum, that someone (I wish I could remember who) directed me over here.

I started small the first year, didn't have much faith, but now in my third year, it has definitely changed the way I garden. Not only can I grow so much more than when I was starting seeds in the kitchen windowsill, or trying to rely on store bought plants, which was so expensive, but now I am so much more confident in my gardening, and willing to take chances on things I never dreamed I could grow from seed.

So I've gone from wondering how I was going to fill the blank slate of a yard, to wishing I had a bigger one to hold all of the things I want to grow!

Bonnie

I have been growing from seed for more than 40 years. Grew up on a farm with a big vegetable garden so growing veggies from seed was just part of life. Mostly I direct seeded vegetables and annuals. Started direct sowing perennial seeds in the summer for fall plant out about 10 years ago. Also started tomato seeds inside and a few annuals.

I think I found out about winter sowing from an article telling about Trudi's tomato seed offer. Started with a few containers the first year and with the first sprouts I was hooked. Now I ws hundreds of containers each year sharing with family, friends, and neighbors.

Being in z: 4 I still start tomatoes and a few annuals inside. Everything else is ws or spring sown or fall sown using ws techniques.

Lets see year 1 with the house, divided existing daff. bulbs, planted some cornflowers from seed, added a few plants from my moms.
Year 2 added bulbs to even out the front and put more color in the back, wasn't going to do seed but mom gave me half a pack of nasturtuims, bought a few sorry looking plants from lowe's clearance rack and added more flowers from mom's.
Year 3 added more bulbs, added tons of flowers from mom's started tom's from seed.
Year 4 added more bulbs, bought plants online, got freebies from friends, added more plants than ever from mom's, bought annuals, started marigolds and nasturtiums from seed. Started two kinds of tom's, pumpkins and squash from seed, oh and cukes. Learned to save seed. Learned to trade seeds.
Year 5 currently watching 400 WS containers and fretting because I swore I wouldn't "buy" a plant this year. Hoping to give some to my mom and friends.

Wow I have come a long way. :) Now it's a passion, I go to the library with my kids to get gardening books and was pregnant then a new mom with my youngest during these years. That made the digging tough, luckily I wasn't so far along in spring and then was recovering the next spring.

This is my first posting, so I'll just jump into the fray. I fell into this WS forum by accident and have enjoyed reading all your experiences tremendously.
We live in the Wisconsin woods on 40 acres in zone 4. I've been amateur gardening for many years and, like many of you, find it to be my therapy and joy. I get mixed signals from my husband, who feels it takes up too much of my time, but he does enjoy the results and the admiration of our friends and neighbors for our gardens.

I started seed sowing indoors several years ago to save money and have expanded this hobby to take up much of our walk-out basement. I currently have 4 - 4 shelf racks in front of our big windows and am running out of space with much more to do. I couldn't believe my luck when I happened on this website, but I must admit to having mixed feelings - I'm a bit nervous about starting something new (it's my age I think) and I find it hard to believe it could be that easy and successful. HOWEVER, I'm more than willing to give it a try. I've put out 3 jugs a few days ago and have mail-ordered a bunch of additional seeds that I can't wait to plant. It looks like most of you are in warmer areas than my zone 4, so I hope I'm not too far behind.

Wish me luck and I'd appreciate any advice and hints that will be helpful to my colder climate.

elctj: Welcome to wintersowing!

It's not your age. We were all skeptical at first. Wait until you see those first sprouts! Your life will never be the same. Some perennials are a little more tricky, take longer to germinate, so I hope that you have included some annuals in your list. Tender annuals are best done close to your last frost date, so hold off for things like zinnias. The method remains the same, you just sow a couple of weeks before your last frost date.

We have lots of successful wintersowers in zone 4 who will give you some encouragement. I'm in zone 6, but with 3 great wintersowing years under my belt I'm now in year four.

Karen

Welcome elctj!!

PV,

I am a great procrastinator. I will jump into things head first and feverishly go at it and then let it go for a while and then go back and finish whenever. Gardening accepts this kind of behavior and when I discovered this, that's when I began to pursue what has become a wonderful passion.

My gardens tolerate me. They survive my sporadic neglect and respond well to my occasional nurturing of the soil around them. They never disappoint me. They have taught me tolerance as well.

My mother grew a small garden while raising 9 children. Her quiet time was spent there and now she has huge unruly gardens which are a sight to behold. She paints and does sculptures and is one of the most creative persons I know. She sees beauty in simplicity. She takes great comfort in weeding the gardens. So do I.

Can anyone relate?

Oh, I can relate. I'm a jack-of-all-trades, master of a few. I fliter and flutter around from one thing to the next, moving on (for a time) when I begin to get bored ... or overwhelmed by my own enthusiasm.

Gardening, since finding WS, has managed to hold my attention very consistently now for eight years, which even I find surprising. I don't have to weed much (smile), and my "garden" is really too small to require a lot of time, but I find the plant kingdom so fascinating that my quiet time is now spent reading and researching all I can about it.

Amazing to me.

PV

elctj, I am still ws perennials, only those perennials needing long periods of cold stratification would be best sown next winter. I am still ws those that need 2-3 weeks of cold strat. Will start most annuals in April and the early part of May so you have plenty of time.

Hi, elctj! You will love it here - and with that much land, wintersowing will be perfect for you!

Until I got to be an adult with a home of my own, I was an "on and off" gardener. My Dad was really into it, and I pretty much worshipped him, so we did some gardening together when I was a kid. Fell out of it in my teens and early 20s. Mid-20's, with house & kids of my own, I got back into it. When we moved to the southcoast of MA in 96, we bought a house with great windows, and I got back into growing things from seed. Never had a light set-up, but was able to get a goodly amount to grow in the windows; legginess and damp-off loss notwithstanding. The week I learned about the WS Forum (on another garden forum site) coincided with the time DH walked around my transplanted tomatoes, peppers, and flowers that were waiting to be hardened off, and murmured "It's a jungle in here."

Once I found out that growing seeds outside works for nearly every seed I can think of, provided you time it right (tropicals, too, you just have to start some of them later), I never looked back.

I still start some things in my windows in February, because I have to see green. LOL, they still get leggy (it's too early to start seeds indoors in Feb in MA, they should be started in March!), and I still fight damp off. I've limited myself to two flats, though, and that provides enough transplants to feed my need for early green without turning the whole house into a jungle.

I depend on WS for 98% of what I grow.

Thank you all for the warm welcome. Not only was this my first posting on the GardenWeb, but my first posting anywhere. You all seem to have so much fun I just had to join in. I don't have much time at the computer and won't be able to be as active as I'd like, but will look forward to joining in whenever I can.

mnwsgal, we're almost neighbors (I'm over in St. Croix County) and I'm glad to hear you've been successful in our frozen tundra. I appreciate the encouragement. One of the worries I had with ws was finding a good location for my containers - our 3 dogs are likely to mess with them anywhere close to the house. We do have a fenced-in garden that keeps the dogs, deer and other critters out, but up to now I couldn't get there because the gate was snowed in. Now that I know I still have time for most of my seeds, the garden will be the perfect place and I'll get busy this weekend.

EJ

EJ, be sure to check the MN forum for other MN related info including upcoming plant swaps. It is a great place to meet other gardeners including some other winter sowers.