Shannon - I believe that is right and it is why I don't do cartwheels over winter sowing. Our winters are considered mild around here and they are perfect for starting most hardy ornamental plants by seed. Just plant them where you want them. What a lot of people do is to plant a bunch of seeds and then yank out the smallest or weakest leaving only the strong. Perennials and shrubs can take a while to reach a noticeable size so you have to be patient, but plenty of them will grow and even bloom the first year from seed. If the instructions for growing any plant from seed say to scarify or stratify you could just let mother nature do all that work for you (winter freezing and thawing has the same effect on the seed coating as scarifying or scratching away the outer layer of the seed coat with a file, or stratifying by placing the seed in damp peat moss and storing it in the refrigerator). A lot of what gets published for gardening is derived from research for commercial growing of crops. In a commercial greenhouse they want all the seedlings to be uniform in size and form. It helps them sell all the plants if all the plants on the table look identical. So they devised systems to help with uniformity by using greenhouses and mechanically manipulating seeds so they all sprout at the same time. These things don't really matter to a gardener. You can succeed or fail either way. I tend to go with the less-work method of sowing in site.

I am sooooo jealous Maidofshade! Your plants are georgous! You have a greenhouse...my little flourescent lights do not compare...not to mention I have plants in almost every window right now!! None of my seeds seem to be too unhappy or lanky! But....I am a bit worried about not having a coldframe and being 7.5 months prego and carrying all my seedlings outdoors daily to harden them off! None of my WS jugs are popping sprouts yet...my bachelor buttons wereup and then the last snow killed them.Huh! I will keep watching! I dug out my elephant ear bulb to check on it (inside in a pot) and it does have roots coming off the bottom now..so maybe it will sprout out the top soon!!! My green and habanero peppers are all only about 2" tall andjust getting their second leaves! Tomatoes ...well being I planted the generic CHERRY those are thick stems with4 sets of true leaves and about 4" tall. Rutgers are 2" tallwith 2 sets true leaves, and Beefsteak..the same. I was nutz and started cucumber (I did it last year too and it worked well!) they are 3" tall with 2 sets of true leaves. Eggplant is about the same. Basil and parsley are 6-8" tall and lively of course! The seedlings I am leary about: Trailing Lobelia-they are just barely above the soil and look stressed. Morning Glory...they are like 6-8" tall and ready to start climbing....Felicia is about 2" tall and bushy -do I thin these?.....Cleome...about 3" tall and just two leaves on each stem! Anyone grow these from seeds????? Any help would be great!

I don't know if this will be of any help, but it works for me. I'm Zone 7/8ish and this is the way I do it. Tomorrow I'm going to sprout my Tomato seeds on moist paper towel, inside a margerine container in a warm spot. The seed usually sprouts in 5 to 6 days, sometimes sooner. I then prick them out gently and plant in 21/2" pots. They stay on the kitchen windowsill until they get 3 sets of true leaves and then they go into 4" pots. At this time I take them out to the greenhouse, (minimal heat in my greenhouse). They stay in the 4"er's until the roots fill the pots. I then repot into scotch pots, the tomatoes stay in these until they are planted out. I grow my tomatoes in a raised bed planter that is cut into a bit of a slope, the top of the front of the planter is waist high, the back ground level. The soil warms up very early. This planter also has a fibreglass roof over it, we have to deal with tomato blight up here and the roof keeps the foliage dry. Because the soil is warm I can plant my Tomatoes out May 1st. I dig a generous hole throw in a handful of Dolamite Lime,and scratch it around. The tomatoes are unpotted, I remove some of the lower leaves, lay them on their sides and bury them so that just the very tops are sticking out. I put hot caps over the plants for a couple of weeks. I don't fertilize till after the caps come off. The tomato plants usually have flowers when I plant them out, Most years we have Tomatoes in July. Celebrity, is the Tomato I grow, they don't need much staking. Boy can I ramble on:-). A......

Amy, I often grow shorter, earlier plants in between brussels sprouts and collards plants and pull them out as they mature....the type depends on whether it is spring or fall, but you can use leaf lettuce, spinach, etc. Or even small cool-season flowers like violas and pansies. You can leave the flowers as a flowering (with edible flowers!) living mulch but I gradually harvest all the leaf lettuce and spinach before the b.s. or cauliflower plants get too large and start invading their space. The shorter kinds of nasturtiums work well for this too. I love all the purple veggies and have the seeds of a ton of them already. I just never really thought about sort of making purple a focus and planting them all together as much as possible, but you can bet I am thinking about it now. Some places have mixed kale where you can get 4 or 5 or 6 kale varieties in one seed packet and usually several of those have reddish or purplish coloring. Mustards can be used to add lots of color. I like Osaka Purple, but I think the prettiest mustard plants I've ever grown were Ruby Streaks and Golden Streaks with the color of each one playing off the other. stockergal and sandplum, It is too easy to dream of a fall garden in the midst of cool, wet early June weather, but a lot of summers, by the time July rolls around, the heat (in the garden and in the kitchen canning) is killing me and I lose my enthuiasm for a fall garden. What kills the enthusiasm even more quickly is snakes! If the garden is too snake-infested, I largely stay out of it for a few weeks, venturing in only to harvest. Still, even if I don't do a whole fall garden, I try to single out at least one raised bed (the long ones are about 40' long by 4' wide) and replant it with stuff for fall. I start with fall tomato plants in latest June or earliest July and expand from there. Much also depends on space available. Sometimes a lot of hot season crops are still producing well and I won't yank them out to replace them with fall plants. I just work around them as I can. The nice thing about planting the fall garden is that I can slip out there early in the morning, plant, and water. Since Tim's alarm clock wakes me up at 4 a.m., I'm always up before the sun, have my indoor stuff done and can run out to the garden at first light, which often is the coolest part of a summer day here. Then, for a few weeks, all you really have to do is weed and water as the seeds spout and grow or the transplants settle in and grow. That makes it more bearable to me....just trying to get them going in the heat is hard enough some years. In the fall the weeds can be challenging, but a lot of mulch used early when the plants are very small can help with that. Sometimes I plant the fall garden really late and then cross my fingers and just hope it all works out. Or, if the thought of a fall garden in the ground is too daunting, you could plant a few favorite things in large containers. That pretty much eliminates the weeding issue, and often the snake issue as well, especially if I drape bird netting over the newly planted containers to keep the snakes out. We accidentally trap a lot of snakes in bird netting every year, but I don't mind. I'd rather find a copperhead in bird netting, as I did less than 3 hours ago, than find it striking at me in a garden pathway or something. It is shocking how many venomous snakes we catch in bird netting in the garden. If I'm going to find them in the garden, that's the best way to find them as long as I'm not holding the bird netting in my hand at the time. Mary, I can stay out of brick-and-mortar stores pretty easily, but when it rains all day, I am prone to shop online. This week, I made a firm vow to stay off the seed company websites so I wouldn't order a lot of seeds, and I kept that vow. Instead, I went to canning supply websites and bought canning supplies. It is easier than going from store to store looking for some of the more obscure items. Dawn