Winter Sowing Update

Parsley seedlings grown outdoors in a milk jug

Earlier this year, I posted about trying winter sowing, starting seeds in mini-greenhouses made from gallon milk jugs.  I had read about this last year, and was simply itching to try it for myself.  I've started seeds indoors for several years, and had dealt with watering, watching out to see if seed trays are too wet or dry, damping off, fungus gnats, and all the many trays perched on every conceivable surface in the house. Then there's the taking the trays in and outside to harden off the seedlings before they can be planted. Winter sowing as described would simplify all of that.

I had decided to try several different kinds of seeds this first year as an experiment.  I chose sweet peas, parsley, chives, sunflowers, bachelor buttons, coneflowers and four o'clocks.  Nine milk jug greenhouses were set up as described in the earlier post. They were put out on the patio, on an east-facing wall where they would get a little shelter from the wind, but would get sun and rain.  Every couple of weeks, I checked on them to see if they needed water, but that was it for care.  More recently, I enjoyed peeking in the tops of the jugs to watch the progress of the seedlings as they began to grow.

The sweet peas, parsley and chives absolutely flourished.  The coneflowers, sunflowers and bachelor buttons did quite well, and only one set of seeds, the four o'clocks, did not come up at all.  This is a better success rate than I have when raising seeds indoors in the past, and with MUCH less fuss! 

In the last few weeks, I have begun to cut the slits on the sides of the jugs larger to expose the seedlings to more air and moisture.  This helped harden them off.

A week or so ago I opened up one jug to plant out the sweet pea seedlings, since they are quite cold-hardy and need the early start. If the weather ever settles down, I'd like to get the rest planted out soon.

Would I do this again?  Definitely!  I have been most impressed with this method for starting seeds.  It won't totally replace indoor seed starting for the more delicate plants, but I plan to save up many more gallon milk jugs this year, and do many more seeds next spring.  Easy is good!