Winter Sowing Has Started - Part I

I have the winter blues! I decided to start my vegetable seeds over the week-end. Planning my garden takes the blues away.  This year, I decided to try winter sowing. I've been saving plastic liter, juice and milk bottles. Anything that I can cut and punch holes in the bottom for drainage. I started about 20 bottles over the week-end. Tomatoes, dill, zuchinni, squash, sunflowers and petunias. Tomatoes, dill and petunias reseed, so hopefully I will have a successful germination rate.  Research showed that the squash and zuchinni will also do well. l will continue winter sowing through-out February. I'll start a few tomatoes, cukes and greenbeans inside to ensure I have something to plant.  I set these bottles outside my kitchen door, but will eventually move them to my picnic table.  It had just started snowing, so they received a nice coating.   

Stay tuned for additional posts.  If you are a gardener and use the winter sowing method, please share your experience.

Making Newspaper Pots

Have you tried making newspaper pots?  I watched several videos on Youtube that I just found too complicated, but I found another that was right down my line.   I love Patty Moreno, The Garden Girl.  She has great tips on vertical gardening, making raised bed etc.  She also had a great video on how to make newspaper pots.  I've modified a little, but here it goes:

In the above picture, I'm using a 1/4 sheet of newspaper folded in half.  You will want to fold it across not length wise.  Next,  I used a pint size canning jar, leaving about a 1/4 of the mouth of the jar out of the newspaper and roll the jar until all of the newspaper is used.  Using biodegradable tape, tape the ends of the newspaper together.   If you don't have biodegradable tape, you can remove it from the newspaper later and toss the newspaper in the compost bin, which is what I plan to do.  I actually used scotch tape, but duct tape will work too. 

Turn the jar upside down on the opening of the jar.  Fold the bottom of the newspaper as if you're wrapping Christmas gift.  Tape the folds down.  

Remove the jar from the newspaper, and you have a great newspaper pot.  You can adjust the opening of the pot to the height you would like by just folding the top inward.  Fill with seed starter or potting soil and you're ready to go.  The newspaper will absorb water just like a peat pot.  I used the newspaper pots to try to start my sunflower seeds.  So far, so good. 

Getting My Seeds Started

I had planned to start my seeds today, but that didn't happen.  I spent the day sterilzing the pots I saved from my geranium and petunia purchases last year and sterilized them with a little bleach and hot water.  I'm a big customer of our local Big Lots so I purchased a few peat pots for a $1.00 for good measure, lol.  I purchased a bag of seed starting mix from the local hardware store and was rearing to go this morning.  For some reason I decided to research the seed starting mix that I purchased.   What did I find, mixed reviews.  I purchased a bag of the organic Jiffy and some of the reviews have stated that it's difficult to germinate seeds with this mix.  Apparently, the mix doesn't hold water well.  Some of the customers stated that the water beaded on top of the mixture when when they tried to water the seedling.  I was leery of this review, I thought you watered from the bottom when you were germinating seeds and just misted the plant and surface?  I continued reading, other reviews and they also stated that they had difficulty when they tried to moisten the mixture prior to placing it in the pots/trays.  Either way, there's a problem.   

According to customers,  Jiffy is aware that the mixture doesn't absorb water well; however, they're not pulling it from the shelves.  A user suggested that water be added several days before using to ensure it absorbs the water; otherwise, you will encounter problems. 

Thankfully, I saved my receipt and will return it Monday.  I'm so glad that I decided to research the mix before I planted my seeds.  I would have been extremely disappointed and wondering what I was doing wrong and why none of my seeds germinated.  Rather than take this chance, I'll wait a few days and find a mix worthy of my precious seeds. 

What type of seed starting mix do you use?  Have you encountered this problem?  I'm also curious about seedling heating mats, do you use one?  Initially, I wasn't going to use them, but decided to purchase 2.