I agree, last year I had much better germination than I do know. I had a soil compact problem, but they are still slow at growing. My annuals I sowed last week are sprouting like crazy. Can't say that for my perennials.

I have 20 jugs of petunias and nothing has germinated yet. I hope that has to do with my zone, i'm in northern michigan. Out of 209 jugs i have about 40 with no signs of life. They're mostly petunias and black-eyed susan vine. I'm keeping vigil for them! Haha

I'm kicking myself in the butt for having been too lazy to store my daylily seeds in the fridge last year and then waited until March to plant them. I usually wait until March because most years it's still cold until about now and so they have a few weeks to stratify, but not this year. I'm having poor germination, and to top it off, some dang critter got into one of the jugs and dug out part of the dirt. Grrr! The daylily seeds were the only thing I winter sowed this year. I don't have anymore beds to start growing more things, and I have plants in pots from last year that I can't get anyone to come take. No one wants free plants. Double grrr!

Karen

I too am still waiting on petunias & black eye susan vine (these are seeds I purchased fresh this year). Thought with the various warm spells we have been having they would have sprouted by now. Though things are cool again today. It looks like my laura bush volunteers may have just started sprouting. Either that or some sort of weed - lol.

Still waiting on a couple tomatoes and lavender (again fresh seed). Though I know lavender can be really sporadic

~stlgirl

Weird. Petunias are usually early sprouters for me. But these seeds are probably 4 to 5 years old. They're pellets of tidal wave. In the past few years every seed sprouted and grew. This year, none.

I guess all seeds have a viability limit, but I'd expect at least a couple of sprouts.

Karen

Oh crap! I was totally banking on these (new seed) petunias for all my hanging baskets! I've GOTTA get something...a few meezly sprouts....please Lord. They're fresh seed as well as the bes vine. But the part that gives me hope is the fact that even the good-ole-trusty laura bush hasn't popped up yet either. I think they're all (i'm speaking for seeds now) congregating under that dirt holding meetings about the timing of their grand entrance. And this, my dear fellow gardeners, is the hope i'm gonna cling to! :D

So far so good for me. Astilbe hasn't sprouted, but I'm not sure if this is a late sprouter or something else. Karen, I'm suprised Joe Pye didn't do well for you. I have two containers ready to go out in a new location for them. I will say that the sprouts are smaller than usual, but that could be the weather.

4:00 never sprouted, but I think I was too impatient. I ended up direct sowing the container and let me nature take care of things.

Every year that I've been wintersowing (9 now), it seems to me that there is one plant that should be easy to sprout that people have trouble with "across the board". I don't remember most of them from year to year, but I do remember one year it was columbines. This year it seems to be petunias.

I would maintain that, despite the warmer than average winter everywhere, it's still early. Don't give up yet.

bakemom, my Joe Pye seeds were harvested from my "Little Joe". I wasn't sure whether this cultivar even produced viable seeds, and assumed that if they grew, they'd produce the tall variety. Some sources say it's propagated by cuttings or division. See link below.

Drippy, the thing is, I want petunias for my pots before mid summer! I grew some bacopa under lights to plant with them, and they're in bloom already. I bought two beautiful, big, supertunias in 6" pots a few days ago.

Karen

Here is a link that might be useful: Little Joe joe pye

Karen, I buy earlier color as well - I just bought a lovely red gerbera on sale; I've never been able to start these from seed, indoors or out. I like the fact that wintersown annuals bloom later - they take the place of the early ones (big box stores have EVERYTHING in bloom right now), which peter out by mid-summer.

sprouted for me: basil lavendar yarrow strawflowers

Artemesia - one out of a bunch
Rosemary - none

Ok, so i do see a couple VERY TINY sprouts popped up in a couple petunia jugs. Could be weeds so not getting hopes up yet. But that's better than nothing. Will keep ya posted.

I'll add my experience to this..I saved BES seeds from my own plants last Fall and decided to plant them in 4 in. nursery pots on 3/19 and they still have not germinated for me. I ran out of the potting seed(Fafard)and went back to get more and they don't sell that exact one..and pushed Hoffman seed starting mix on me. I told the man that I wanted to grow them in nursery pots but he recommended this.I'm convinced these manufacturers attach big bonus money to these nurseries to push sales on specific brands. I placed Glad Press&Seal over the top of the pot and poked about 5 or6 holes in the top for air circulation and they still haven't germinated. I bought them inside thinking the potting mix had dried up; there was only a smigen dry in one container so I bottom watered them all that night, put fresh Press&Seal over the top again and placed them back outside. Still no germination..frustrating. Watch me go and buy a few plants and then these that I have planted will germinate! We are finally getting some light rainfall this afternoon. Yeh!

Decided to resow petunia seeds about week ago - happy to say one of my jugs is showing sprouts. Yay!

Still no petunia sprouts in the jugs I sowed a couple months ago. Got a feeling it got to damp for them.

~StLGirl

My 'tunias still haven't sprouted, either. I bought 2 pots of them. :-)

Karen

I have several jugs of petunias finally popping up- phew! Still no bes vine-shucks. The laura bush are doing the best so far. We're supposed to see alot of warm weather this coming week so i'd better see something soon!

Bakemom, just noticed a few tiny astilbe sprouts today.

As for petunias, I did a few jugs in Feb and only got a few sprouts. A few weeks ago I did a few more jugs and they sprouted quickly, but the germination rate probably isn't that high and they're new seeds.

I know that my wife and my neighbor have not had the success as in the past. The only obvious difference is the spring weather. Last year the weather was very wet and this year very early hot weather. We had to water the jugs a couple of times. I guess that we will have to buy plants.

Weather is definitely the biggest obstacle in WSing success. Last year we had a cold, extremely wet spring- and always cloudy. What did sprout grew SO slowly. This year early warmth and frequent sunny days helped. I still have about 4 jugs (I think) that haven't sprouted or have one tiny sprout out of about 25 jugs.

So far this year I've bought 2 cheap little perennials (S. May Night and Phlox David) and a few petunias, so haven't spent much. I'll also buy a beefsteak tomato for my husband since they're his favorite and I only have one sprout of those.

Karen

This being my 1st year WSing, I'm happy to say that all the petunias I've sown have sprouted, and very quickly too! I think it has to do with that fact that I sowed late & we had unusually warm weather to help. They were one of the things I was particularly skeptical about too!

Four o'clock is one of the couple jugs that haven't sprouted yet for me, the others are perennials so I'm assuming they'll take longer.

org greenjeans:
hang on for the 4 o'clocks- I always had good luck ws'ing them. You may think nothing is going to happen, and then pop, there they are.

ellen

Final score:
One jug- salpiglossis- no sprouts. Dumped it.
3 jugs with one sprout- Joe Pye, petunia, and corydalis.

The rest had varying numbers of sprouts, some great, some poor. I'm trying to get most things planted this week.

Yvonne's Salvia- one jug so overgrown, I don't know if I can get 'em out and separate. They're about 6" tall. The other jug had only 2 seedlings. So what's with this???

Karen