Good Morning, Dear, Can't recall if I asked you yesterday. Do you rotate your Ivy? Plants? I 'attempt' rotating every other week, so plants get equal amount of light. If sun cooperates. :) The front side of your Ivy is beautiful, healthy-looking and full. Leaves are vividly green. Do you pinch? Your ivy is very compact. The back is somewhat bare, but not terrible. Once you start rotating, new foliage should sprout, unless your ivy goes dormant or slows-growth during fall and winter season. There's always spring!!! :) My ivy slows down once days shorten. In fact, it started slowing growth around mid-August. About watering/showering. I prefer using water that sits out at least 24-hours, but every so often, when soil is dry, I'll fill up sink, add a couple drops of dish soap, then let plant sit until the top is moist. Then, leaves are sprayed with hose. My ivy is downstairs, so when it's showered it's done in the sink. Plants showered in shower, 'larger plants,' are set in the tub, then I adjust nozzle to spray entire plant/s. Some water lands in soil..no biggie. If soil is dry, aiming shower head at plant does the job. Use a wire/mesh plug so soil doesn't go down the drain. Believe me, there were times I showered several plants without the mesh...Next thing I was adding Draino down the drain. lol. Ditto on sinks. Beautiful view. Dear, my eyes aren't the best..Is your Ivy in or outside? lol.

Jerry sorry about the delayed response hee hee been way to busy to remember where I post, lol. Some things that need a warm cool warm season like helebores I started those in september but I wonder if I was to late for those. Most of my containers I have started on december 21st to february. I have several things I need to get going but sometimes life just gets in the way, hopefully I will have time this weekend to get in the dirt. As for information the winter sowing forum has a ton of info under the faq's and then Trudi has a website also it is called wintersown.org. There are a ton of people willing to help with any question you may have in regards to winter sowing for the first time, though pretty much you have the concept down. I use water bottles but most use milk jugs. I use whatever I have, whether it be cottage cheese containers or grated cheese containers to water bottles or juice bottles. I think I have in the picture one of those rotisserie chicken containers that is in use also even an ice cream bucket. I use my containers as I would a starting seed tray, just make sure there is plenty of drainage and of course ventilation. For the water bottles we just toss the lid for the cottage cheese or rotisserie chicken containers we just cut some holes in the top. I have even used a lasagna pan inside a comforter bag. I have drainage holes in the bottom and I cut ventilation holes in the top. This is the most recent picture I have of the lasagna pan, I think it was taken a few weeks back. As for the pictures I know there is a link somewhere how to add pictures. Though a simple way to tell you is upload your pictures to a third party photo client. I have been using photobucket some use flikr. They will provide you with an html code and just simply copy and paste the code into the message box. inside the brackets > insert height="500" width="600" for the size of pictures here in this message. I sure hope that helps. People on the wintersowing forum are extremely eager to help and extremely friendly, they love questions don't be afraid of them. They will welcome you with open arms!! Oh and there are several from canada that winter sow!!

I havent found the morning sun damage to be true.Like said above,a plant that doesnt get morning sun is most likey shaded by something that also fends of frosts.On my front porch my most tender shade plants are sheltered from light frosts AND get sunup,sunrise, sunshine.They so do best of all from the hours of direct winter sunlight for three hours or so. The same very same tenders in the shade and shelter of the backyard start to fall apart or show much stress from hours of cold shade untill noon. Quite a difference between a shade 48f and sun 48f on tropicals just to pick a temp that seems to be roughly,the turning point for tropicals.

How large are the containers they are in? And you're what - zone 6? These are all pretty tough, hardy conifers and should withstand your winter temperatures without problems, provided they are not in tiny little pots. If that is a concern, grouping them together in a somewhat protected location (not openly exposed) and mulched well with something like pine straw or wood chips/bark should suffice, ditto the heeling into the soil. It is root freezing you should be worried about, not damage to the top growth. And I can't imagine that spending the winter in the dark would do any of these conifers any good. As evergreens, they never go fully dormant and still require sunlight to carry on the process of photosynthesis. You would be stressing them unnecessarily to deprive them of light for that long, perhaps even fatally.