Welcome! I'm a gardening newbie and it's my first time wintersowing. Well, I should say it's my first time planning for wintersowing! It's just too warm here right now, so I'm going to wait a couple of more weeks. I'm in MD, so we're pretty close by!

Welcome! I was last year's newbie.

Welcome. We're glad to have you.

Karen

Welcome, welcome. Do you need any seeds to help fill in those 5 acres? Check in with Bakemom and the Newbie Seed Pack project. Or let us know in a post what you're looking for. The folks on this forum are very generous and love to enable fellow gardeners.

Martha

ohhh 5 acres,Katrina your gonna have so much fun..Welcome aboard..
Tom

Welcome! This is the best group ever, with lots of information, free seeds and great conversation. Last year was my first year winter sowing and I had a bountiful harvest with huge success! Have fun and get ready to do the happy dance when you see sprouts!
~Lisa/NC

Welcome to the asylum Katrina!! If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask away. Folks here generally have the answers or can point you to where to find them. Most important thing is to have fun and wake up in March wondering where the winter went!!

Welcome Katrina! I was a newbie last year too! I have a few seeds to share if you'd like :). Everyone here is easy to get along with and they're very helpful in answering any questions you may have. It's really quite simple and so much fun!

As Trudi says, don't overdo it, but I think with 5 acres you could sow a heck of a lot more than I could lol.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

5 acres is a lot of space for sure but my husband likes grass so we'll leave some of that for him to play with! lol
I really want a field of purple coneflowers! My 5 year old loves butterflies and I know the butterflies love the coneflowers, so those will be my first attempt at wsing...oh and anything else I can find! I wish I would've found this sooner so I could've started saving containers. My family goes through about 3 gallons of milk per week...oh to think of all those jugs gone to waste!!! :(

Thou shalt not regret milk jugs disposed of prior to knowledge of or participation in winter sowing. Those jugs didn't go to waste--they just weren't repurposed to your advantage. There are plenty more MJs in your future. Could be that another WSer may have those MJs and is filling them with growers mix as we speak.

My first time to WS I asked a neighbor to bring me MJs from the landfill recycle bin. He goes every week and he howled with laughter at the idea I was going to plant seeds in them. Once a week I'd get home from work to find the bed of my truck full which is one of the reasons why I WS almost 500 of them. When the green wave rolled through in April, he stopped laughing. In December 2010 he brought me apple & pear tree seeds from the heirloom trees in Vermont where he grew up. He asked me to WS them for him. He gave me 4 apple & 10 pear tree seeds. In May 2011 I gave him 4 apple & 10 pear tree sprouts to plant in his orchard.

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Would love to ws some trees too. How long until the seedlings become true trees? How many years does that take?

Hey Katrina! I'm a newbie here as well. This is my second season WS'ing. I found out about it last winter on Dave's Garden website. I learned a lot of useful things last winter, but only sowed around 20 jugs. This year I hope to do much more!

~Stephanie