I'll join your rant! It's been gray and chilly till this week, now we are Finally having some spring sunnny weather. Planted out a new huge bed of tiny seedlings on Saturday, so excited... and then the deer/bugs/somebody thought it was a salad. Lost all my argeratum red sea, some baby's breath, some other things that I can't remember.

Today I put out a whole bunch of new jacobs ladder babies - if they are gone in the morning I will be VERY unhappy.

So sorry aabout your babies! I have been seeing that some of you have had trouble with bunnies so I got some of the green plastic baskets that strawberries come in and am putting them over some of the seedlings that I have been planting. I don't have enough for all of them, but I am trying to put them over the ones that I don't have many of. I also put them over an area where I direct sowed some vines at the bottom of a trellis because the neighbour's cat kept digging up the area every night. I did push them into the soft soil to anchor them but a stone/brick on top would work as well. I like the baskets as they let in light and water, while still protecting the babies until they get too tall by which time I 'hope' that they can withstand whatever. :)
gg

I have some containers that haven't sprouted anything at all. It's been unusually cool here for Spring, and I feel like I can't get anything planted.
I'm hoping that it warms up more consistently soon, I went ahead and directly sowed some annual seed in hanging baskets, so I'm crossing my fingers that they'll do something.
I sowed sweet peas and morning glories to grow up my arbor and old washing machine, plus a trellis, still have more to do.
Hopefully it will improve.

Wendy
i join your rant too. I looked around yesterday at little sprouts I had planted one month ago, and they are not doing anything. They are in some suspended state between life and death. lol
Then I had lost some to frost. And one of my 4 o'clocks has the nerve to DIE even tho I make the trip almost every day to water when necessary. The ingrate!

So for me this spring WS'ing has been a lot of work with little to show. But like you I'll probably be doing it again. :)

In my area the Spring has been the coldest in memory and presumably that has something to do with everything being so slow.

good luck to you

ellen

Since this is my first WS year and I too am discouraged, it is good to hear that it has been unusual because of this crazy weather. I will definitely do it again next year, but I sure haven't gotten the results I expected. It is almost June and I am still covering my tomatoes at night! The green peppers look real sad also.

I sure hope we get some warm days and nights soon.

This was one of my better years despite the up and down temps. I did have one entire flat of 36 various morning glories and lobelia that didn't germinate - the only thing I can figure is that I may have cooked the seeds - they were sown later and sat a couple of days with the top on the tray in the bright sun. My other no-shows were ageratum and hosta. I am not giving up on the hosta because I thought I had read that they can take a pretty long time to germinate......

Lynne

This has been a somewhat difficult WSing season for me too. It was fine until it got really really warm and then went cold again.
Then it was dry for a really long time, and without rain predicted in the forecast, we got a downpour which drowned out several containers of seedlings.
This weather isn't cooperating with indoor sowing either! My pepper plants are ready to go in the ground and I keep waiting for the temps to get out of the low 40s. I thought we were safe, but now tonight it's possible it might get into the 30s! What the heck!
One nice thing, the Lilacs have lasted longer than I've ever seen...they like the cool weather, even if the bees and I don't.

Linda

There have been some problems this year - I don't keep good records but it seems to me that the germination rate is not what it was last year. Some things I was really looking forward to just didn't show.

But, I have to say that the amazing performance of last year's perennials is doing a great job of taking my mind off the disappointment! They have grown so much that I really don't know where I would have put all the new seedlings if they had sprouted.

It's completely coincidental but I'm trying to figure out how to arrange my beds since the things that DID come up all turn out to be about the same height! Doh! All that planning for size and color and it turns out Mother Nature has something else planned.

My results overall were good. Of course I had some non-sprouters and some with only 1, 2, or 3 seedlings. The surprise was which ones were less than stellar- bachelor buttons, nigella, emilia, cleome... Most did pretty well though.

My big mistake this year was I sowed to much of some things and every one germinated (like ruds), and not enough short ones for the front of the beds.

Each year has it's own weather challenges. My first year we had a long warm spell in winter. Things germinated too early and froze when the cold weather returned.

Last year, my second, we had that prolonged freeze (2 or 3 days and nights below freezing) at Easter time. Lots of folks lost sprouts then. Right after that the heat came, the rain stopped, and we had prolonged spring and summer of heat and drought.

This year no frost problems here, but temps stayed cold overall and it rained like crazy. It's really only warmed up and dried out in the last week or two.

Like I said, each year is different and has it's own unique challenges. Being able to weave gardening around Mother Natures mood of the day is tricky.

Karen

For me it was a year of all or nothing the plants that did come up came up in droves and the duds all gave me little to nothing. This means that I have tons of some plants and little to nothing of others. My 2 big surprises were my Marigolds and Black-eyed Susans neither one did anything. I did WS MG's last year and they did great. I've never done Susans before but I figured they'd be really easy to grow but I haven't given up yet. And with plants this expensive I'm glad that I got what I did or else I'd probably be even more broke.

Strouper

I did very little WSing this season except for the tomatoes and a few flats for planters. However, I'm doing some spring and summer sowing o fill in as needed--but without any sense of urgency--it's more whim-like. This year we want to do some work on the back fence which is longest length of the garden so I did no sowing for that and as perennials need be moved those mostly went into other beds where I might put seedlings. There was no great need for a mighty green wave of seedlings.

Fortunately, I live where flats of petunias aren't too pricey, so I am having fun doing mix and match with colors and stripes. They're going into the tub tomatoes as edging to cascade down the sides. I've got some annuals that I WSed and those are for planters. I've still got half a flat of white alyssum to plant out. I just sowed a flat of Panarama Mix Monarda which looked so pretty in the packet that I bought two ;-) Of course, two years from now (if they germinate well) I'll be vexing them for their stoloniferous invasions, but at least the butterflies will be happy.

It's finally warmed up, it was a drizzy and damp spring up to now--good for transplanting--but bad for achy bones.

Sigh.

T

Karen,
You are right about each year having its own challenges. It is the wonder of Ma Nature for sure. I gotta get back into the mentality of rolling with her, whatever she brings. It's part of the pleasure of gardening, really, seeing what shows up in spite of our attempts to control or defy Her... :-)

Linda