(Hopefully) Reap What You Sow

Today was "divide and conquer" day for Small Project Sunday, due to our schedules.

Patrick took on the bedroom closet.

Meanwhile, I started to get ready for replanting our gardens. Summit in particular had suffered kind of a major setback last year, and we are still not sure what will come back up, particularly in the new-ish native garden (also a post on that here). We also are trying to plant more native plants at Ashland, and have installed native gardens at the house where Patrick's dad lives on Winter Street and at Hague.

But this all has to be on a budget, because the loss of plants at Summit alone might be major cross your fingers that it's not!), so today I took a class on winter seed sowing at the Capital River Watershed District. I had looked up information online and it did not look too hard, but I was happy to have some folks there show me the ropes.

It was 59 degrees today, and too late to winter sow seeds that have longer germination periods (60 days). But they taught us how to cold-stratify those in the refrigerator.

For those that only need 30 days, they said those could still go outside, so they showed us how to make little milk-bottle greenhouses. It's pretty easy — make drainage holes in the corners and some watering holes on top. Cut the bottle about halfway up so it hinges at the handle (it's easier said than done to cut a straight line). Fill it with potting soil (NOT ground soil), get it wet, and plant the seeds. Be sure to mark what it is both inside and outside.

They said you could bring up to 3 bottles (thanks to all the people I scrounged them from!), so I did 3 mini-greenhouses and 1 cold-stratify there.

However, I had more seeds, and more bottles, at home, so I was able to do several more, and cold-stratify 6 more sets of seeds in the fridge. Next year, if this works, I'll get a January/February start so I don't have to do that.


I really hope it works! My friend Caroline does a lot of seed starting indoors with hydro-packs (I think) and I have always been jealous of her amazing gardening abilities. If this works I'll be able to get a nice set of varied plants to rebuild these gardens, and maybe even share with others!


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