Beautiful flowers & beautiful pictures. I had nasturtium a long time ago & thought that it was delicious in salads and made a lovely-looking salad to take to covered dish affairs. Congratulations on your success, Sara!

They're all nice. I especially like the little soapwort because I found some growing on city property, picked a few, made a little boquet and photographed it. The milkweed is stunning! I tried verb. b., but it didn't germinate for me. I didn't know how to collect seeds from the soapwort or if I could xplant them. Somebody on the web id'ed them for me. I love to go trekking around to see what's growing among the weeds in neglected places. I have found some real treasures (to me) I wish I could have saved. One was a lovely shrub. I made jam from some wild grapes, I didn't like it but my friend did. Ah then I found this lovely bindweed. Luckily someone warned me. I think I had one stringer this year climbing my gypsophilia. I unwound it and yanked it out.

Thank you for all your kind comments. The Buddleia is my real treasure and Trudi and Tiffy I must thank you so much for your advice. I was planning to cut it back in the next few weeks, so you really saved me. I met a young man recently (horticultural student) who was surprised I could grow Buddleia here. He advised me to wrap it for winter, but it's about 7 feet tall. I think I will mulch the roots with leaves as I did to the little plants I put in last fall. v1rtu0s1ty, I sowed two different sets of Budddliea seeds and only one set germinated. They were fresh seeds, taken from my neighbour's sister's garden in Toronto. You may want to try again with seed harvested this year. Vera, I swear by M. fistulosa. I grew it in full sun last year and had a huge, 6 foot tall plant. This year in part shade, it's more manageable. I will be discarding my M. didyma which is always full of worms and gets PM even in full sun. Thanks for the hint about the tea - it's now 5:23 and I've been up since 2:30 a.m. This is the third year for the perennial sweet pea. I got the seeds in a trade in 2006. They grew beautifully in a large pot, and these plants were a few extras which I planted in front of my peony to grow over it. After getting no flowers, I realized they were the perennials. The plants grew last year and had only one bloom, but this spring they took off. They are very vigorous plants and I think I should move them - too near the front of the bed. But the blooms were glorious - perfectly formed flowers of pale pink, white, pale blue. I even had a small vase of them on my deck table. I spent my first few years of WSing planting lots of perennials and large flowering shrubs. It seemed spent those years madly scurrying around the garden, moving seedlings, planting, weeding. This year was more relaxed: fewer containers and it has been devoted to annuals: petunias, nasturtiums, marigolds, daturas, four o'clocks, which have been very rewarding. I have so many differnt types of petunias which are really very beautiful flowers, if you take the time to look at them. They are all still in bloom as well as many of my late flowering perennials, so my garden still has lots of colour. I would never have achieved this without Winter Sowing, so hats off to Trudi!! You are really a treasure!! Northerner.

I'll second Sharon's suggestions. And rather than wishing winter earlier, you could sow the Shasta Daisies now for fall planting and earlier blooms next season. I WSd Cosmos and they're doing well. My favourite WS cut flower is carnations (Dianthus, Chaubaud mix). I'd never grown them before and didn't realize they're a perennial. This was my first winter, and I didn't find out about WSing until it was too late for soil sales and collecting containers (I had to beg friends not to recycle.) The other container I liked is 4L milk jugs. I saw a suggestion for leaving about a 5" deep bottom, cutting the entire top off (rather than leaving a hinge) and putting the top back on by sliding it inside the bottom section -- no tape required. I'm going to try that this fall. For things that don't like their roots disturbed, I used newspaper pots with no bottoms. - roll a 4" strip of newspaper into a tube similar to a toilet roll and add a tiny piece of tape. - Wedge these (or just use empty toilet rolls) in side-by-side in the bottom of a milk jug and fill with soil. The pots don't need a bottom as they're sitting inside a jug. - Use the top of the milk jug as a funnel to get the soil into the tube, - 'stir' the soil with chopstick to get it into the bottom of the tube. When you plant out, bury the entire pot, just like a peat pot. I hope your sowing goes well. Try some summer sowing to get warmed up!