Some plants seem to do best with a longer season which you can get by starting them indoors and transplanting, others are hard to get started outdoors in our cooler climate and hard to maintain soil moisture. For these, I start them earlier indoors or buy from a green house--tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower. The cole crops handle frost well, so they will go right out into the garden the first of May or as soon after that as I can get them out and I have water. They seem to establish well and take off with the cooler weather. The tomatoes and peppers will typically wait until Memorial Day or into June as they don't do much until the cooler spring weather patterns shift to the warmer summer pattern. I plant onion sets as early as possible, they do very well with the cool weather. Radishes and carrots also do well early. Peas like cool weather, but I have fewer problems with seed and root rots if I wait and plant them with the beans. The frost sensitive plants will get direct sown anywhere from around May 10th to June 10th, depending on time and how the weather is shaping up--whether it acts like cool, early spring or like it wants to warm up for summer. They will usually take 7-10 days to come up, which for a mid-May planting gets them to that last frost date and I figure I can replant if we do get a bad frost that takes them out--although when they have just come up and are very close to the warmer ground they seem to handle a light frost. This includes the beans, corn (corn could go in around the first of May, but comes up better and faster if I wait a bit longer), potatoes, squashes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and watermelons. Never been able to successfully transplant a watermelon, cantaloupe get set back enough that the direct-sown ones always outperform. I've had volunteer squash come up in early May, so feel pretty safe planting them in mid to late May. I also only start the plants that go into the garden in relatively small numbers. The idea of trying to transplant a couple hundred corn plants or hairlike seedling onions just doesn't excite me.

Welcome to gardening and the gardenweb forums, haloony. Most garden-related stuff is dependent on your climate, less so with house plants, but it can still be an important factor in some discussions. Climates are divided into gardening zones. You can find your zone here. If you include your zone and state in your profile info, it will show up next to your name automatically when you say something on these forums. That will allow people to better know what kind of advice to give you. Most people include their state, too. The "8b AL" next to my name means I'm in zone 8b, in Alabama. Your question/interest seems to be outdoor-gardening-related but posted to the house plants forum. That's fine even if your intention is to grow the torenia outside and we can discuss that here. But the advice is different, depending on your intent. So, with that in mind, I just had a few observations that could help you to be less frustrated in the future, inside and out. The suggestion to investigate annual seeds is excellent, I had the same idea reading your post. But for most locations, the weather and amount of sunlight that are optimal to grow most annual seeds is winding down for this year. That's not to say that you can't have any luck growing some cool things from seed and shouldn't start now, but your success won't be as good as attempts you will hopefully make next spring. If you do attempt to grow annuals from seed indoors over the winter, even the plants described for shade will probably need some direct sun since the winter rays are so much less strong than summer rays. Plants described for full sun may not do much, even in a south-facing bow window. This is a factor where location (FL vs. VT, for example) would be very important to the info. You can probably (dont know where you are) get some zinnia flowers from seed yet this year. They can go from seed to flower in about 6 weeks. It would need to be outside with lots of sunshine. Torenia is not a traditional house plant. It's an annual, which makes flowers and then dies within the same year. The label "house plant" is usually given to long-lived plants that are known to grow or at least stay alive indoors. However, any plant growing in a home is a house plant, so the fun and experiments are virtually limitless. If your goal is to have something green growing inside this winter, your best bet might be to buy a plant, or ask others who have plants if they are able to take a cutting of their plant for you. Many houseplants are as easy to pass on as snipping off a piece and "planting it" in a pot. Although not all are so easy to multiply from cuttings, that and division are the general methods by which most house plants are propagated. Most house plants are difficult to grow from seeds, do not have readily available seeds to harvest or buy, and/or take a very long time to grow from seeds. If you like avocados, try sprouting some of the pits. There...

If starting indoors, buy a bag of seed starting mix. It will be sterile, often made of fine peat and vermiculite. You can use the potting/container mix if starting outdoors. Top the pot with a little chick grit (in a pinch, look for a box of parakeet gravel at the pet section of your grocery store) or vermiculite, will prevent a rain from moving the seeds around and will prevent a crust forming should the top layer dry out.

Hi Linda! Well, I can tell you about my (limited) experience sowing Ech seed. I'm a first-time winter sower - never really did any seeds before this year, other than morning glories. I sowed a lot of Echinacea seeds because I really wanted to make sure I'd have plenty. Well, I had PLENTY (as you know - some are coming to you! LOL). I think every single seed I sowed germinated. Even the four seeds I found on my Green Jewel and sowed just for grins - all four came up. So, given your experience of no germination when sowing in spring or summer, maybe it's true that they need stratification. But maybe the Purpurea varieties will do it without? Sorry I'm not more help. Just wanted to share my experience in the hope that it may be helpful in some way. :)