I began my veggies in the greenhouse on our screened in porch, daytime temp in there with no lights for heat has been 80's, nightimes lowest low 40 and they have taken off like wildflowers. I'd wait because tomorrow our high is 40's. By this weekend I'd go for it! The local gardenng place said they start selling their veggies by the first week of May so use that as a gauge since they know their business.

PM2, Unless you have seeds that need warm-cold-warm stratification to germinate, going into year 8 now with WS, you can sow your seeds where we both live in MA as late as the beginning of February without any problems, even ones that need some cold stratification. We've had such crazy weather over the winter in MA the last several years, that it can get very risky to sow seeds this early. Several years ago, I had seeds out by the end of Dec. and it got so warm in mid Jan, that a lot of them germinated and then mother nature through her warmth out the window and brought back "real winter" and I lost all those seedlings along with all the seeds that where in the containers. I know this happened to a couple other WS that live around where we do, PM2, and after that experience and the crazy Dec and Jan. we have had since, I don't do any WS till the beginning of Feb. I had kept very concise records on when seeds where sown, when they germinated from earlier years and compared them to the first year I didn't WS any seeds till the first week in Feb. and found no real difference in when they germinated. It had always been within a week or 2 of the same dates from year to year and this has been for the past 5 years. My falls are just to busy for me to get things ready to sow anything in Dec. and I'm still filling orders from my business till the day before Xmas and January I'm busy doing some other things for the business and just getting time to organize. February works out great for me and the seeds don't mind. Perennials are out in February and then wait till mid March and the biennials if any go out then. From the first week in April on, the early veggies go out, lettuce, spinach, peas, snow peas etc., then the early blooming annuals. By mid April the toms are out, the peppers, cukes and first round of zinnias, marigolds etc. By May 1, everything is out, including the tender annuals and odds are, a bunch of seedlings have been covered overnight to protect them. Memorial weekend on becomes plant out time and getting ready for my plant swap, and by the second week in June, most of the seedlings are with their respective "owners" and mine are in the ground, all except the few perennials I hold onto till the fall to plant. Fran

Actually there are two kinds, the ones we get that are weeds that become invasive and the ones we buy in seed packs that are colored, and those won't reseed, but if you buy the orange ones those will I think reseed. I never bought them because I already get them as reseeds anyway as weed, so there is no need to buy them. The key is the color or maybe the colored ones reseed but come back as orange having crossed breed with the wild ones, that wiped out the colors.

The quick answer is mostly yes it is too early and it would be a mistake to sow all these seeds outside this weekend. Everything you listed has a specific time it needs to be planted and it varies a great deal from one variety to another. Also, we don't know if you're in far southern OK or far northern OK or somewhere in between the two. I'll briefly address them one by one. CALADIUMS: Raised from bulbs and the bulbs will rot if planted in cold soil. Generally you don't plant them in the ground until after the soil temperature at planting depth is consistently at or above 70 degrees for about 5 consecutive days. In much of Oklahoma that wouldn't occur until around or after May 1st. PANSY: Cool-season flower normally sown in fall in southern OK or sown indoors in flats anywhere in Oklahoma and set out in the soil around March 1st. Pansies sown from seed outdoors now probably will sprout and grow but by the time they are large enough to bloom, the air temperatures are going to be getting too hot for them. In my part of Oklahoma, which is southcentral OK, pansies play out in the heat and most people here replace them with a more heat-tolerant plant in late May or early June. PETUNIA: Unless you're planting the heat-tolerant Laura Bush petunia or one of the Wave petunias that has some heat tolerance, it is getting late to start these from seed. Generally I sow regular Wave Petunia seeds indoors in flats under light in January so that around March 1st I can transplant them outside. I direct sow the Laura Bush petunia seed in the ground around mid-Feb to early March and they'll sprout within 2 or 3 weeks depending on what the soil and air temperatures are doing. FERNS: Ferns generally can be purchased bare-root in plastic bags in the stores at this time of year. They aren't grown from seed but rather are propagated from spores found on the underside of their foliage. So, if you have the bare-root ferns , follow the package directions. I've only planted ferns from containers. CANTERBURY BELLS are biennials, so seed sown now will give you foliage this year and flowers next year. Follow the directions on the seed packet, but you should know they are not always easy to grow in our climate. COLEUS needs warm temperatures, so if you sow seed now outdoors it likely will rot before it sprouts. You need to wait until your average last frost date has arrived before you direct-sow coleus seed. The problem with direct-sowing coleus seed is that by the time the soil temps are warm enough (about 65-70, I thnk) for the seeds to sprout and the young seedlings to survive, hot weather is just around the corner. Most people sow coleus seed inside so they have decent-sized plants 2 to 4 inches tall to set out after the last frost because those plants have a more developed root system and can better handled the hot temperatures that arrive in late May or early June. There are some newer hybrid Sun Coleus varieties you can buy as plants in stores that tolerate our heat a lot better than the traditional coleus grown from seed do. ALYSSUM is fairly cold tolerant so you probably could direct sow it this weekend, but there's no guarantee. Some years it grows easily for seed from me from seed sown directly in the bed where it will grow, and other years it freezes out during a March or April cold spell that somewhat colder than average. TULIPS are raised from bulbs and those bulbs need 45-60 days of pre-chilling before they are planted. Normally we plant them here in Oklahoma sometime in October or November, although if the weather is really hot some of us in southern OK wait until early to mid-December. It is late to plant them here now, but if they've been chilled for 45-60 days, you could plant them now and expect that you'll have blooms this year. If they haven't been pre-chilled, your odds of success drop substantially. GLADIOLAS are grown from corms that look like smallish, flattened bulbs. Corms can rot in very cold soil, so usually you wait until you're pretty close to your average last frost date before you plant them. I generally plant the corms into Dixie cups of soil that I leave on the front porch and if cold temperatures threaten, I'll carry them inside. Some years I only have to bring them inside once or twice. Then I plant them into the ground around my last frost date. Here in southern OK, our soil rarely gets cold enough to harm them, so mine come back every year. I have some that have come back for about 7 or 8 years or more and have multiplied. VIOLETS: These are some of the earliest bloomers we have and it is late to sow seed now. Mine will begin blooming any day now. Violet seeds generally need to be chilled to break their dormancy, so here in southern OK we sow them in the fall. Hope the above info helps. Growing flowers from seeds can be hard when you're new at growing from seed because each and every flower had specific conditions it needs to have met in order for the seed to grow or for the bulbs or corms to grow and bloom properly. Dawn