A few weeks ago, my mother asked if I wanted to be added to a winter sowing group on social media, and I said yes, eager to learn whatever I can about vegetable gardening in general. We've recently moved to a more rural location, and I've been excited and enthusiastic about learning (finally) to garden and preserve. The fact that the house came with a few tomato plants and a tangled cluster of Concord grapes thrilled me to no end, and resulted in a few extra salad toppings and low-cost jars of jelly.
Winter sowing appeals to me because I'm often hanging around in the winter, bored, indoors, without much to do, and filling containers with soil seems to be at just about the right level of strenuousness for post-holiday-season activity. I hear that it can toughen up your seeds and make your plants potentially hardier, although I have no anecdotal evidence of this for myself yet. That's why it's an experiment!
Earlier this week, my organic seeds came in the mail, and I had procured a bag of high-quality potting soil from our local farm store (they're starting to recognize me there from my frequent visits to fawn over their selection of Carhartt apparel). I found my husband's sloth in not bringing the recycling to the transfer station to be of benefit, as I was able to salvage several empty milk jugs to use as my mini-greenhouses. My daughter, who is already four, sat with me on the kitchen floor to help me assemble our emerging winter sowing collection and, for the sake of keeping her interest, we began with radish seeds.
We proceeded to sow red peppers, green beans, cucumbers, carrots, and zucchini, as well. The little plastic containers were originally going to take up residence on a table near our back porch, until a gust of wind blew two of them off the table. I hope that they still have their seeds in them. So now they are hanging out on the back porch, subject to the chilling winds of fate. We shall see how things unfold, and more seeds will be planted as I gather more containers.
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