You may find it difficult to germinate spinach seeds indoors, especially if you are warming the soil. I've had much better success sowing spinach outside, even if the soil is cold. Most veggie seed will germinate faster with warmer temps, but spinach is not one. It prefers cool conditions to germinate. I'm thinking 55-60F is ideal. Just something to think about.

Thanks for the info. The impatien hasn't been in the same pot for 20 years. This lovely elderly woman brings one of her new ones in every year. It's been in this pot and soil since last summer. How she carries it in and out I don't know as the pot holds 6 quarts of soil. Anyway I told her what you said and she decided to take the plant out of the pot and put in fresh soil (miracle grow soil), she pruned some of the roots off and put it back in the pot. She cut it back only because it was so huge. She keeps the plant in the same place in her home every year, but last fall it got nipped by some frost before she got it in the house. never did that before. The winter was horribly cold this year. January was like living in Siberia. I wonder if it also got some drafts from the window and maybe it should have been misted or something since the hot air heat is so dry. It felt and sounded like the furnace never turned off the entire month of January. Do you think that any of this may have caused no blooms all winter since it sat in the same location as always?

Roosp, I see that you are in zone 5 in mid-Missouri. I'm in the northeast area of MO and I'm sure that things would freeze here unless we added some heat. Do you have some method of retaining solar heat? Also, the winter sun is very hot here in our south windows. How do you guard the plants from too much sun? Your wintergarten sounds delightful. Rebecca

I do something similar here. I germinate several hot peppers in September and then bring them inside when the temp requires. They continue to grow a decent amount, but then when the spring comes and it is time to plant, I have a good size one ready to go from the get go. I am doing it with a scorpion, ghost, hab, and golden cayennes this year.