How does your garden grow?

My green thumb got itchy so I decided to start planting my veggie garden this weekend. Yes, in February. Yes, outside (in containers). I've decided to take a leap of faith and try out winter sowing.

A fellow gardener on one of the facebook discussion groups that I belong to posted a link to WinterSown.org. The site has all kinds of information about getting started with winter sowing. WinterSown also has a program set up where you can send in a self-addressed envelope and some money for postage and they will send you a variety of seeds that would do well for winter sowing. If you want more info, check out the website. It's basic but very informative!

Anyhow, I was totally hooked on the idea. I eventually sent in my envelopes and was sent an amazing variety of seeds and info pamphlets. Nothing screams spring to me more than gardening and by February I think most Canadians are itching for a springy distraction!

Selection of seeds I received from 3 SASE Seed offers from WinterSown.org.

Important life lesson: I know that all of you are going to rush over to the WinterSown website and totally start some little greenhouses of your own! But before you do that, check out your bank's service charges for cashing cheques internationally. I may have tried to make other arrangements for payment if I had know that my bank was going to charge me $7.50 per cheque!! (My cheques were for $2, $7 and $7....)  The more you know...

Back to creating life.

I promise that I'm not going to go into crazy details about the process. Also, I am far from a pro-gardener but I like it and am a mean google-er? googlist? so I feel pretty confident that I haven't messed this up too badly. If you want to know more info, feel free to leave questions in a comment and I'll answer the best I can or will link you to the FAQs on some of the websites I used for reference. If you want to try it out, check out some discussion boards and other resources. Knowledge is power people.


I basically took some old lasagna pans that I had kicking around, poked a bunch of holes in them, filled them up with soil and sprinkled the seeds on top. That's it - super easy! Okay, I also had to make little sticks to label the seeds. The extra effort was almost a deal breaker but I persevered...

The final selection of seeds for the winter sowing experiment.

 It's amazing how wonderful dirt can smell! The sun and a fresh (read chilly) breeze were pouring in through the kitchen window. I could hear the water dripping off the roof as winter was melting off of our house. And to top it all off, I was making banana bread so it smelled delicious. I was totally giddy!

In all of my excitement to get started, I didn't realize that we didn't have any duct tape to seal up the little greenhouses. Or at least my lame attempt to find some was unsuccessful. I decided to just go with the packing tape that was easy to find we apparently have in abundance. I figured I would ride on the whole leap of faith thing and just pray that the tape would do the job. If not, I guess I'll have to dig around a little bit more and re-tape them. Fingers crossed! (Incidentally, the taping was the most stressful part because the kids were napping and tape is amazingly raucousy. I only woke the littlest once but he was easily lulled back to sleep *phew*)

Ready for a sprinkling of soil and the greenhouse lids.

Just as I was getting ready to sprinkle the seeds, the oven timer went off. Now the banana bread was sitting on the counter taunting me visually and smelling even more delicious now that it was free of the oven. The smell was super overwhelming and I promise you that as soon as it was cool enough to not burn my fingers, I totally ate some of it. Smothered in real butter. And it was amazing.

Delicious distraction

 Now that I had renewed energy, I was able to finish taping up the lasagna pans and move them outside. These four trays have veggies, herbs and sunflowers in them. (Side note: All of the very small seeds can be sprinkled on top and dusted with soil but the larger sunflower seeds should have been sown a bit deeper into the soil. I did fix that but forgot to take a pic. Please use your imagination and pretend they are buried.) Next week, I'm hoping to make up a few trays with flowers. I also kept some of the seeds so I could start them in a more traditional way (inside, not in the middle of winter) and then I'll be able to compare them as they grow. Just like a real scientist!

These greenhouses are super classy!

 So there they are. My little greenhouses sitting in my slightly pathetic winter garden. When I close my eyes, I can see and practically taste all of the yumminess that will come from those little containers. I can't help but feel a little panicky that they are going to get attacked by squirrels/raccoon or that they will freeze and die but seeds survive through winter all of the time and most of them don't have sweet digs to sleep in! Little packages of springy faith :)

Another fun gardening thing that I'll be doing this week is going to check out Ottawa's Seedy Saturday on March 1st. Seedy Saturday is a free event at the Rob Kolbus Centre (Britannia). There are vendors and workshops. I'm looking forward to the square-foot gardening talk. This is our second year with a square-foot garden and if there's anything I can do to maximize our yields, I am totally game! Also, the same lovely lady who put me on to winter sowing is going to be hosting a swap table (seeds, plants, cuttings and other gardening stuff). I'm hoping to trade in some of the amazing seeds I got from the WinterSown folks and swap them for a few more herbs and veggies that I need to round out my garden. I'll be bringing my daughter too so hopefully there will be some fun stuff for her to enjoy as well.

I'll be sure to share some of the highlights of Seedy Saturday. I would also like to post my garden plans. This year we are doing only edibles in both the back and front yards. I've been doing a lot of research on "pretty" veggies so that I can still enjoy flowers throughout the summer. I'll probably still keep a few small planters of "normal" flowers around the yard too. So many possibilities but we'll talk about that another time!

Have any of you ever tried winter sowing? What are you hoping to plant in your gardens this year? Who's coming to Seedy Saturday with me and Miss N?