I love your 'standing on your head to see inside the jugs' comment! I've got a neighbor who's seen me peering down into mine each morning; makes me chuckle because she's dying to figure out what I'm doing over here, but I'm not offering information & she's (so far) not got up the nerve to ask! We live in a neighborhood where compost piles not concealed in tidy store-bought bins, happy hens clucking about & rows of taped milk jugs are NOT the norm! I'm still waiting for someone to actually define 'normal' for me...until then, I'll keep listening to my own drummer!

Good luck with yours in those temps this week! I'm having to water mine everyday now, so looking forward to getting them into the ground soon. But the next few nights here we've got frost warnings so I'm closing mine back up in the evenings.

I hear ya sister, may as well pop the tops and give that a go! I had all my jugs in dappled shade and finally moved my no-show jugs to full sun to see if that would help. I think i'll be popping those tops this week with all the heat coming.

I'm sorry that your not getting sprouts. Just make sure that if you do take the tops off, that you check the moisture levels more frequently. The open air and wind really do make things dry out much more quickly. I'd definitely try full sun for a week or so. Do you have more of the seeds your waiting for that could be resown? Or did they need cold stratification? It's possible that the seeds partially germinated during the hot days we had earlier this winter, but then got stalled at a very early stage of development due to the return of cold. And then they may have frozen or molded from constant moisture. I'd just think restarting might get you something at least. Good Luck.

Martha

I have a bunch of empty ones as well. At this point I think it is just not going to happen. I opened my jugs this week hoping for something. They were so full off green algae and complete mud I think the seeds rotted.

I have 15 holes in each jug and they were in a good location. This was my first year ws and while veggies and herbs did well, I would give my flowers a C. I am nott so sure I would do flowers again. I had poor germination in many containers. Some only germinating 1-3 plants.

I had all fresh seed, I used Pro-mix, I followed directions exactly on the seed packets etc.

Out of the 300 flowers and 30 tomatoes that I started, about half of the tomatoes did not sprout and probably 75 flowers either did not sprout or they sprouted and I killed them by watering with too much pressure or not enough water or who knows what. That's the lowest success rate I have ever had with winter sowing. The unsprouted containers have until the end of next week to sprout. If they don't then I spread the dirt in open spaces in my flower bed just in case they sprout later. I'm ready to be done with them and get the remaining ones into the ground. I probably have 50 left to plant. Some are still too small. In my intense desert climate I have not had much luck planting them when they are too small.

I thought it was a tough year for wintersowing here because of the weird weather. I think even the seeds were confused, and a couple of times it looked like things were starting to germinate,then just disappeared.

I'm with docmom (Martha). It is definitely worth doing some spring sowing. I had about 56 containers, and all but 8 of those sprouted. Some of them were warmer weather annuals anyway, and others were older seed that may not have been viable. However even in just the last few days, I have had more sprouts coming out of what I thought would be duds. Don't give up!!! I have noticed that my perrennials continue to remain teeny tiny and I hope they take off soon.