Love this thread!!! I keep nodding my head at some of the things (yogurt cups all over the place, full of seeds and tiny ripped-off corners of paper for labels, making another flower bed simply cuz' you don't have room for all the seedlings, etc). You know you have a problem when you read this post and say to yourself "I'm not as bad as some of the people here". Then you realize you are worse and were only trying to delude yourself before. LOL. Classic case of addict denial! I have to say, reading the posts here makes me feel a little less guilty about my seed snatchin' and WHERE I have ended up snatchin' from. :-) You feel so pleased when you convert your own father into a fellow seed snatcher! One day he came up to me with a happy/sneaky look on his face and pulled a seedpod (a simple marigold) out of his pocket that he snagged from a store. Next he gives me a tiny NOID sprig of a shrub that he pulled up from in front of some mall in town ;-D Then one day I give him a tin of herbal drops I no longer want and ask him to save the tin. I didn't even have to tell him what I wanted it for- he said it for me "for seeds!" I think I have found my kinfolk here in all of you. Great post! ;-) CMK

That Walmart thing happened to me just the other day. But really, potting soil is not a weird thing to ask for in the winter. People do still have house plants, right? Even if they don't get the ws thing, they should be able to realize that potting soil does not have a specific season. You use the Amazon gift cards you got for Christmas to order a bunch of seeds for plants you have not been able to find or never heard of. (After checking to make sure they were friendly for your zone) just to be able to have unique plants growing in your yard.

Good suggestions. I don't cut my milk jug all the way around, leave a little hinge just under the handle. Then when I open them up, I peg them to the ground. If it gets cold again, it's easier to tape it shut again for late frosts and you probably don't have to tape it as thoroughly as initially. I save my containers and use them again, and the right kinds of tops are with the right jugs. What I'm wrestling with is that I decided I want to sow a lot of seeds in oversized cell packs. I have the trays that match but no holes in them. Anyway, I don't want to preset anything to hold plastic up and over them now, and the ground will be frozen when I set my jugs out in about Feb to poke anything down in. I've been looking around and the only thing I have to keep the plastic a couple inches off (or just an inch might be ok) the surface of the cell packs to keep from crushing the new growth would be some bricks, some old glass blocks. Can anybody think of what might work better that is easy/free/cheap? I think saran wrap would be too thin for those and have some clear plastic in a roll that is probably too heavy, maybe w/slits in it heavy would be ok. I can get something in between. The reason I want to sow in cell packs is for some of my seeds that resent transplanting to have a better chance and save me work later. I sometimes start in those trays you talked about w/covers (from McD's salads, KFC etc.) They work great. Sometimes I plant directly into the ground but some I like to transplant individually into cell packs so they can grow on, very tedious. Sowing directly into cell packs would save me that step. One trick I learned for spring sowing but should work equally well for winter sowing is to plant in the deli containers, then fill 16 oz plactic cups w/drainage holes punched in the bottom partway up with potting soil. Then use a spatula & dull knife and work a chunk of seedlings out of the tray and just set it on top of the soil, the roots will find it easy to work on down. Then I let grow on for awhile and plant with a bulb planter. That would work well for people whose gardens are crowded or whatever. I have to make things as easy on myself as possible or it won't all get done.

Patti, I know you have had a lot of answers and I probably missed that along the way, but please describe in exact terms what you mean by "A TOTAL DISASTER". Did the seeds fail to germinate at all? Did they start to germinate, then died off? Did they die when you transplanted them to the ground? Depending on the answer, you should then find the cure. If they all failed to germinate, then maybe the seeds were old / not viable. If they germinated, but then died down, maybe the ventillation slits were not big enough? Or you opened the lids too early in the year and a blast of cold did them in? If you transplanted them to the ground and they died afterwards, could it be we are talking about plants that don't like to be transplanted (poppies, etc.) and they died of shock? Or were eaten by the slugs? (happens with my lupines *every single time*, sigh...) I'm not familiar with ws in a climate as cold as yours, but I think it's important you identify the root cause of the problem and fix it before you try again, so as to avoid being discouraged. I have been wsoing for about 4 years now with varying degrees of success, but overall my impression is that the method works very well, especially for perennials, shrubs and trees. I have started crape myrtles, vitex and a birch tree, plus herbaceous perennials, via this method with success. Until I discovered wsowing I no longer bothered to sow anything, as direct sowing is very iffy in my garden and either the slugs, snails or birds destroyed all that was sowed. Wsowing does give me a lot more control about what I sow. The only thing that is not so good for my particular situation is the fact that by the time seedlings are good to go in the ground we are already having hot and dry weather, which sometimes prevents them from performing as good. As a rule of thumb which I discovered by trial and error, I now tend to avoid planting anything in the ground from May to September, even nursery bought plants. I find that our long dry Summers stress plants beyond belief and many struggle to establish and die. As WSowing usually takes a while to grow seedlings to an acceptable size before the end of April, I will occasionally loose a plant if I plant it out later than that. But in my view this is not a failure of the method, it's a characteristic of my climate which I have learnt the hard way... Hope you have success with your WSowing this year. Eduarda