Great pics...great plants. Very encouraging for Canadian winter-sowers! I tried last year with mixed results...will definately try again. Which reminds me, I better get some seedling mix soon before we can't buy it anymore. Thanks for sharing those great plants with us.

Great pics...great plants. Very encouraging for Canadian winter-sowers! I tried last year with mixed results...will definately try again. Which reminds me, I better get some seedling mix soon before we can't buy it anymore. Thanks for sharing those great plants with us.

Great pics...great plants. Very encouraging for Canadian winter-sowers! I tried last year with mixed results...will definately try again. Which reminds me, I better get some seedling mix soon before we can't buy it anymore. Thanks for sharing those great plants with us.

Those are pretty! I just bought some poppy seeds for my kitchen garden/potager next year. I don't believe they would allow us to grow the opium poppy! Just the others due to the hooligans making some sort of brew with them.

Do you live in the part of Alaska where you have 6 months of sun, 6 months of light? I love Alaska! Mostly country and all. It's very beautiful.

I believe nasturtiums are edible, with a peppery taste, but don't quote me on that. Check into it first, but your flowers are beautiful!

Hi Scarlet: I understand that it is legal to grow these poppies in Canada, unless you are growing 'acres' of them for production of opium or for financial gain. In fact, I am told these are the poppy seeds that are on your bagels. I see them all around my neighborhood, in fact, I was given some seeds by a neighbour who did not know what they were until I ID'd them for her.
Yes, Nasturtiums leaves and flowers are edible, but I have never eaten them - tasted them once a long time ago at a nursery where I was being encouraged to buy a plant.
I am glad you enjoyed the pics. and BTW I don't live in Alaska. I took a cruise up in 2004, but I live in a suburb of Ottawa.

You can try the cloches. A big pickle jar over a short plant would work or you can make your own out of glass. I want to try that, but haven't yet. Maybe using some of the green Plexiglas in place of glass in a hexagon shaped globe. That would lengthen the growing season in the beginning, but anything would outgrow them at the end of the season.

These are beautiful though!

http://www.gardencentre.co.uk/product.asp?id=920

{{gwi:541748}}

Northerner - those are beautiful pictures! When did you wintersow the petunias? Mine never even came up. Maybe I sowed them to early, I think I did them at the beginning of March. I want to try again this spring. BTW, I got the burgundy hollyhock seeds from you in trade. Didn't yours have green foliage? Mine has flowered beautifully but the foliage is a mottled green/yellow. The plant is being fertilized and watered the same as the other plants in the garden. Right now it is still flowering and it has 3 stems. Any advice? Marg

Hi Scarlet:
If you go to the mother site, you will see several threads on winter-sowing tomatoes in Zone 5, and see it just can't be done (if you want to have ripe tomatoes during the summer). A friend in the US and I had trials with all sorts of things. My best trial was using an old cooler lined with styrofoam and covered with a glass lid. Germination was not until late April, some early May, some not at all, and then growth was very slow. My first fruit were ripe on August 18, so I did not really have a good harvest from them. So I will continue to do my under the lights thing for tomatoes and peppers. One friend of mine who is a real gardener (runs a nursery) had success by digging a great big whole about 4 feet deep. It was lined with grass clippings for bottom heat and the containers were placed on top of that. He used an old glass window as a covering. But I don't have the time or energy for that.

Hi Marric: I do remember sending you the holly hock seeds, but I can't imagine why you don't have green leaves. Do they have rust? This is always a problem here and I treat the plants with a handful of cornmeal around the crowns about twice a year and that works wonderfully.Do you have a pic. so I could see the leaves. I sent you all the seeds I had, but I am growing the ones pictured above which are from seeds from the Experimental Farm here in Ottawa. They are blooming well, but one thing I don't like about HH's is that they bloom from the bottom up, and it's really difficult to get a pic. of the plant in full bloom. (It's kinda silly, but I noticed it since I got my digital camera and started taking pics. I just want everything to be perfect LOL).

I sow my petunias in April - sometimes early but this last year about April 20. It took about 10 days for germination. Petunias were one of my first WS trials. I had always collected seed, even before I started sowing from seed, and I had them lying around so I tried them and they succeeded. But this year was the first year I got into them because I saw this field of 'huge' petunias going to seed at Upper Canada Village. It was Labour Day weekend, so I scavenged as many seeds as I could. They were amazing - strong healthy plants and such variety: lilacs, pale pinks, blues, whites, and a veined variety in blue and deep pink. It was so exciting each day to see what would appear. I never thought petunias could be so exciting to grow. I have now saved seeds, and tried to separate them. They will be in my deck pots next year.
Northerner.