I’m trying winter sowing this year, although I’m a little late getting to it. I’ve been busy working on my basement, trying to get it framed and then hoping to finish the whole thing this spring.

Winter sowing is basically planting seeds inside a plastic container (I’m using gallon milk jugs) and letting them sit out in the cold so they can freeze, thaw, warm in the sun, freeze again, etc. This freezing and thawing breaks down tough seed coatings and allows the seeds to germinate when they’re naturally read to start growing. The seedlings are hardier and stockier than ones grown indoors under lights. Not everything can be winter sown — tender summer annuals are usually not viable this way, although you can use winter sowing containers to sprout them in mid-spring. There’s a whole lot of info about winter sowing on the GardenWeb Rocky Mountain forum and at www.wintersown.org. There is also a GardenWeb winter sowing forum, but I don’t frequent it (yet!).

Anyway, here are the seeds I sowed today:

• Echinacea ‘Ruby Giant’ – a very large purple coneflower with non-drooping petals
• Lychnis ‘Rose Campion’ – gray with red-purple flowers
• Alyssum ‘Oriental Nights’ – a low purple annual
• Callirhoe involucrata – also called purple poppy mallow or wine cups
• California poppy ‘Summer Sorbet’ – the pink poppy I’ve grown for a few years
• Coreopsis ‘Mahogany Midget’ – a short annual type with deep dark red flowers
• Thymus serpyllum – creeping thyme, with pink flowers
• Vitex agnus-castus – the “purple chaste tree”
• Syringa reticulata ‘Mandshurica’ – a tree lilac; I think it has white flowers
• Aquilegia caerulea – Rocky Mountain Columbine – blue and white flowers

I will have three more containers ready tomorrow. I’ll try to remember to take a photo to show what I’ve done.