I'm new to winter sowing, but I understood that you can plant vegetables, especially the cool weather ones. Yesterday, I WS the following: lettuce, spinach, kale, green beans, squash, and cucumbers. I guess time will tell. You are in the same zone I am.

This is only my 2nd year to winter sow. Last year I tried tomato plants. The seedlings were more healthy than my attempts to start indoors. I am doing tomatoes again this year and a few pepper plants.

I started the seeds in January and some are starting to pop up. I am in California and can plant out early here.

This post was edited by cathyca on Sat, Jan 31, 15 at 14:03

I'll winter sow lettuce and spinach in March just to get a bit of a jump on the season. Might also do some kohlrabi, swiss chard, and/or mizuna at the same time but haven't decided for sure yet. For most vegetables I either direct sow or start inside.

Rodney

Thank you all. I tried tomatoes and peppers last year without much success. The spinach and few other cold weather greens came out good. I tried them again this year, and I hope the tomatoes come out good.

Janet, I had beans in there as well - but that did not work at all. The cucumbers - I dropped the container and so couldn't tell if they would have come. Let's see. This year again, I did all of them. When do you do the WS?

Thanks

birhudugi, I winter sowed on 1/21 and 1/30 and plan to plant snow peas, swiss chard and maybe try some peppers on 2/2 while we are snowed in. We had 30" in the blizzard and more is predicted on Monday. Poor seeds!!! Janet

I wintersow almost all my vegetables except beans. I find the bean seed always rotted on me, and they are sooo easy just to direct sow. I've been wintersowing veggies for almost ten years.

I start off in late February/early March with greens - lettuces, spinach, and arugula. If I decide to grow kale or chard (and I don't often since only my daughter likes these and she's never home anymore!) I would sow these at this time as well. And I at this time also do any kind of other green I might try - mustard greens, mizuna, etc.

Next I do peas, beets, and I used to do my onions at this time as well, but found that I have better luck with onion sets so stopped wintersowing seeds.

Then by the end of March I've finished my tomatoes, peppers, cukes, eggplant, and squashes.

I also continuously sow new containers of lettuces, as I LOVE fresh lettuce and like to have some going all summer if I can.

I feel like I am forgetting something, but that's it for the most part I think. I guess technically some of the late-March (and early-April, when I get behind!) stuff isn't "winter" sowing, but it's the same method, just a little late. :)

Dee

Thank you Janet and Dee

Yes, more snow for monday/tuesday. I hope we don't get too much.

Dee, since you have done it so long, I will try to follow what you said. But do you think my having put all of them (greens, basil, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, chards, etc.) all on Jan 20 would not work, should i try another set? I will save your info for future years at least.

Thanks.

I’m going to winter sow this year and I haven’t done it for awhile. I always did some tomatoes and peppers and they always successfully germinated, but I found them to be so late, that I resorted to purchasing seedlings. I’m going to try them again, to see if late or not, they won’t make up for it later in comparison to bought seedlings.

I wouldn’t winter sow what I find easy to direct sow. Beans, Peas, Cucumbers, Squash, unless someone has some reason that escapes me, why winter sowing them would be better.

Onion seeds are said to want to be sown indoors as early as January, so I can’t see how winter sowing is going to help with those.

Dee, I’m wondering why you winter sow cold season, instead of waiting until the ground thaws and sowing them direct? Do you gain a real time advantage to winter sow them? And then you have to transplant them all, and do you separate them or plant in blocks as is, from the winter sown container? Because I can’t help but wonder if you disturb the growing seedlings, that they would suffer transplant shock and slow down their growth and cancel out any benefit from starting early.

Hi PM2! Nice to see you over here! I think you are asking about cold season vegetables? (looks like you missed a word there!). I sow everything I can using the WS method because it's easy, I can do it a bit at a time and I can do it in February or March, when I have a tad more spare time, before I have a ton of garden clean-up chores, and then when I get the beds ready I can just transplant. I've never really had any kind of transplant problems at all with my plants. I separate the seedlings and transplant and they are fine.

By the way, I always ws tomatoes, and I have two friends who always give me tomato plants they have started in their greenhouses. Their plants are definitely bigger when planted out at the same time as mine, but I never cease to be amazed, year after year, at how the winter-sown plants catch up. It really does surprise me every season, and I then ask myself why I'm surprised when the same thing happened last year, lol. I just think that the ws seedlings are so much smaller than the greenhouse-grown ones that it seems like mine will never catch up, but they do, and quickly! Actually, I can say the same for cuke and pepper plants, as my co-worker usually brings in some greenhouse-grown ones to share, and they are always bigger than mine, but mine do indeed catch up!

:)
Dee

Hi Dee! :-) Nice to see you still posting. I didn’t realize that you did so much winter sowing. I’ve skipped a few years. You make a great point that it is easy to do and can be done during the off season when you have more time. You separate seedlings and they are fine, that is great to know. Another aspect of having ws seedlings, is that they don’t need a period of adjustment from being grown indoors.

I thought that I had read other reports about the tomatoes catching up and I think I had the same experience one year, but my memory is vague.

Sounds like winter sowing is really working out for you and fits the way you like to work. I may try a few experiments this year with vegetable starts. We enlarged our vegetable garden to 3x the size it was, and my previous way of working was on a smaller scale so I worked it differently. Most of my winter sowing has been annual and perennial flowering plants.

I need to get busy, because I haven’t started one container yet. :-)

PM2, I did a ton of winter-sowing when I was selling bouquets at the local farmers markets. I stopped that about 2 years ago due to time/work constraints, and my WSing has therefore decreased, but I still do some. I used to have about 225-250 containers per year (millk jugs, mostly) and last year did about 30.

That's great that you expanded your vegetable garden. I'd like to grow more vegetables myself, but I have such limited sun that my garden can't really physically expand. I think I will try to squeeze in more containers in the pathways and on the patio, which gets some sun, to try to expand a bit.

I need to get going too! Haven't sown a single seed yet. Although it's doubtful I will start soon, as I foolishly left my bale of pro-mix out on the back patio, and it's now covered in a couple feet of snow! Sigh....

:)
Dee

Dee, I got stuck one year with no potting soil because I didn't buy it in the Fall. Frustrating. lol I made up a batch of potting soil last Fall and bought one of those cheap aluminum garbage cans and filled that and put it in the basement for the winter. I'd share if I were closer. :-)

Actually, I noticed this year, that some of the local nurseries are sending me emails for seed starting supplies. So maybe you could purchase more somewhere? I don't think you're going to see that bag of Pro Mix until May! [g]

We have only 5-6hrs of sun in the back for vegetables which works out okay for most things. Cherry tomatoes grow well, but the large size just don't do much at all. So I've started growing in the front yard with the perennials where there is full sun. I planted one Tomato plant out there the last two years and that went so well, this year I'm going to put three plants there. No one bothered them and they did grow better than the tomatoes in the back.

I'm still trying to make a seed order. I'm late again, what else is new. [g]