Hi greengardener, First thing you should do is familiarize with the friendly and knowledgeable folks at the Winter Sowing Forum. Seeds can be sown (almost)any time of year but Winter Sowing has some great benefits that can help anyone grow (amost anything) successfully from seed. Second item: Don't over amend that bed by your butterfly bush. Both it and the plants you want to put there are happier in less fertile soil; most of them are meadow and/or plains plants and Very adaptable to poor soils. A light mulch after you can tell the seedlings apart from the weedlings will work best; and I would suggest you wait til early spring next year (just when the soil starts warming. Cheers and Happy Gardening! Here is a link that might be useful: Trudi's WS website

If I have lots of seed I direct sow them and sometimes thin the next year and sometimes edit by moving in spring. I have well draining sandy soil with gravel on top, seeds come up easily in it -- there is no mulch, frozen ground or standing water in winter. Sometimes I toss them about and sometimes I make a hole with whatever is close by (like a small rock) or in my hand or I just use my finger and press a few in, it depends on the type of seed. Some plants will naturally self sow so they obviously would make good candidates for direct sowing. For seeds I paid a lot for, from a special order or trade, or that have specific needs or are dust-like I will sow in pots, sometimes protected, sometimes not. Some I sow in open pots outdoors in fall, some the same way in late winter if they only need warm and some I sow indoors by a big, warm, sunny south window. Ones that have been successful & which are easy are those which also tend to self sow a just bit (or more aggressively) so I always get volunteer plants without sowing anything. You can find charts for seed sowing/germination requirements that will tell you what different seeds need by way of germinating and you start getting a feel for what can be direct sown. I think Prairiemoon has one but there are several I've seen. Here are a few I can think of that have been successful -- larger seeds of any type, usually they will do well D.S'd penstemon (I have millions of seed so I toss them) gallardia echinacea flame flowers --(Talinum) Salvia greggii Sphaeralcea ambigua or angustifolia ornamental grasses, many types Rudbeckia Ratiba columnifera Caesalpinia gilliesii --Yellow Bird of Paradise Russian Sage Missouri Primrose Liatris Psilostrophe cooperi (Paper Flower) Flame Acanthus Berlandiera lyrata (Chocolate Flower) Agastache Dalea purpureua Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii (Turk's Cap) Thats a short list, there are many more that would be good candidates. Too many hardy annuals to list. Direct Sowing is the best way IMO. Don't mess with winter sowing jugs etc. I just got back from visiting a native plant garden collecting seed. I only got tiny amounts so these will be sown in marked pots. You can get a lot of plant material from rooted cuttings. I found the jugs they use for winter sowing make excellent containers for rooting cuttings which is my main reason for messing with jugs. You can check online to see what is the best method or type of cutting for just about any plant. This is a very easy and economical way to get new plants. Many shrubs can be started from hardwood cuttings in winter.

You'll probably get a little less reseeding, but most of your seeds are probably falling now, after you've already put the compost down, right? I had quite a few volunteers on top of a wood mulch that was put down last spring, and I'm sure that your compost would be a much more favorable material for growth. As long as the seeds are watered in either now or with winter rains and snow, I would think that you would get plenty. I find that my mulch has primarily slowed down the seeds that were in the soil underneath, so I have fewer weeds. Mulching has too many benefits not to do it, and you'll be able to fill in with wintersowing if you have any bare spots.Just collect the seeds of some reseeders as insurance.

Susan, Oh, okay, I don't know what I was thinking that you had started them indoors. I'm hoping that I'll get a head start on them this way. I didn't plant quite all of them yet because I wasn't sure if I was starting them too early. Now that our last frost date is about two months from now (April 15), I suppose that I could start the rest inside. My problem is that I ran out of containers and will have to go get some more. I have all of my individual one and two-gallon ones used with my swamp milkweed started outside, and the smaller individual ones have butterfly weed and tropical milkweed in them. Then I also have 3 flats (72 in a flat) with swamp milkweed in two of them started outside and butterfly weed in the other one. Then I also have butterfly weed and tropical milkweed started in cups. I probably am up to close to 300 milkweed plants here, assuming that the seeds all germinate (I put two in each container), and I'm not even done yet. lol Of course, then there's the Chelone glabra, Zizia aurea, Zizia aptera, Heraculeum maximum, Foeniculum vulgare azoricum, and Angelica atropurpurea seeds from you that I have winter sown. I started some snapdragons inside, Blazing Star Liatris, also Agastache foeniculum and Blue Fescue (I suppose I could have winter sown those last two). I'll direct sow my lupines, zinnias, cosmos, and dill. There, I think I remembered everybody. :) I want to try to locate a small spicebush around here. I wonder if there'd be any harm in digging one out and relocating it here at the edge of our yard next to the woods? A sassafras tree would be nice too. Of course, I'm thinking about other plants for next year...I'd even plant a paw paw tree if I knew that I could get ZST up here, but my Butterflies Through Binoculars book shows their range ending around the southern border of PA. There are so many different kinds of butterflies that I'd like to attract here, but I don't think I want to dig up our whole backyard. :) It's snowing a lot here right now. Schools let out at noon today and have already cancelled for tomorrow. I suppose the weather will soon clear up out your way. Come on spring! Cathy