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Winter sow or Direct sow?

16 years ago

I have two cans of flowerseed mixture that I was given in the high summer, after it was too late to plant them (I thought). One is a wildflower mixture and one is a red/white/blue mixture. I also just finished grubbing out a ton of weeds that grew in my front garden this year, and I now have a 10 x 10 space of bare dirt with one garden statue in the middle of it and a hosta border. More weeds have germinated and put up sprouts already - Mom Nature abhors a vacuum.

Would it work to hoe down those baby weeds, put down a layer of compost, then sprinkle the wildflowers and cover with mulch? I'd like to try the multiple plastic containers, but (a) the seeds are already mixed, and (b) my husband would kill me.

Also, most of the back yard is in the same naked dirt condition, but it's shady enough that I have trouble getting things to grow there. Does anybody have ideas as to what could grow there, both in the borders (which now have some rather spindly rose of sharon) and in the center of the yard where anything resembling grass dies? We don't use the back yard much because it is not inviting as it is, but it has excellent soil.

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Comments (7)

trudi_d
16 years ago
Mixed seeds WS great--just plant the seedlings out via hunk-o-seedlings.

Can't do anything about the husband but suggest you take away his weaponry and learn kickboxing.
gardenscout
16 years ago
then sprinkle the wildflowers and cover with mulch?

Definitely direct sow now if you want, but don't cover with mulch. Maybe some crushed leaves, but not thick mulch. Sow heavily, because the birds will get some. But they will come up fine.
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kqcrna
16 years ago
Another issue with direct sowing flower mixes is identifying all those seedlings when they pop up? Are you good at differentiating desirable seedlings from undesirable weeds? Planting in covered containers cuts down on the number of weed seeds. They can get in there, but generally less than in a garden bed.

Since you recently cleared that area of weeds and things, you undoubtedly have unearthed a number of buried weed seeds, so you can expect those to come up there.

Karen
lblack61
16 years ago
Now that Karen mentions the weed-seed issue, I'm thinking it might be best to WS the seed. Then you can concentrate on prepping the bed for next spring/summer.
I would suggest at least a partial lasagna gardening treatment (slap some cardboard down there, some soil and manure and get the worms working). Maybe put down some cornmeal gluten stuff (like WoW from Gardens Alive) this fall to keep the germination of weed seeds at bay.
My two cents (which is worth less in Canada and England this week)
Linda
vera_eastern_wa
16 years ago
I did something very similar in 2003. Just around thanksgiving with our first snow, I broadcasted out the prairie seeds over a 60x15 prepared area. No mulch, no amendment and the blanket of snow was my protection from birds. Also by this time the mice/voles ect. are housed up for the winter. My seed (flowers/grasses) were individually ordered from reputable native seed suppliers...no walmart mixes just for the simple fact you usually can't find any that do not contain a few non-native noxious/invasive species...like Dames Rocket, Bachelor's Button and Baby's Breath for example; two of which are on our local monitor list and one which made it too the noxious weed list.
Demeter
Original Author
16 years ago
Ooh, it didn't occur to me to check the invasives list. Must go do that before I do anything else. Thanks, all!
vera_eastern_wa
16 years ago
What's invasive here MAY not be in NY, but it's still a good idea to check :D
As for weed control, I spent about 6 months cultivating and allowing weeds seeds to germ and hoeing out annual weeds and/ or digging out tenacious perennial weeds. If you don't know your weed seedlings from desirable seedlings then I would agree that wintersowing would be a better bet because come spring you don't want to be struggling with trying to ID weeds from the rest.

Vera

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