Let's hear about some of your mistakes. Sure everybody has at least one or two.

I shovel-pruned pink evening primrose and planted a hardy geranium in its place. The EP seeds caught my eye back when I first found out about WS but that was before I read how they spread. Yes, they're easy to yank; no, I don't have time.

I'll be interested in hearing more about your plan to stick to your WS plan and not sow more than you originally intended. Fiction's always been my favorite genre...

You're not fooling me you two... How about a compromise postion? We will only plant seeds that we have researched well and know we have a perfect spot for?

I STILL have containers on my deck. It's AUGUST for cripes sake. Planting too many seeds has been been my biggest mistake.

Nancy

It's just so hard, isn't it, not to chase the new plant someone here on GW has introduced to you? I did cut back this year from 177 to about 77. I too still have some plants in jugs. They look very healthy so it isn't hurting them too bad. Now I want to start working on design more, moving things around as needed this fall. Creating a final outline to the gardens. Then I am hoping I will have a plan for what I want to WS in Jan.

I know it would have been better to plan before I started WSing three years ago, but I didn't know what would grow well, what time things would bloom, the height of the plants, what plants would come my way through friends, or by rescuing, etc. Now I know. I think if I take big clumps of dirt with the plant, I shouldn't set them back too far.

One thing I wish I had done was have a holding garden for some plants to get a little bigger and I could have babied a little more. I know I've pulled out several thinking they were weeds. LOL

Ditch those catalogs - I get nothing and like it. I use this site to inspire my want lists - better information and realistic pictures.

~Tina

lOTS OF TEA this winter, that's all I can say.

:)

A lot more organization.

Have you tried pouring vinegar on that perennial sweet pea?

After a few mistakes that either
--became a maintenance nightmare (mint, rose campion, blue forget-me-not, bishop's weed, sweet woodruff, Corydalis lutea, various plants too tall under windows or too close to paths, edging, shrubs & trees)
--or just disappeared either to slugs, drought, winter wet soils, pet damage, or ??? - they don't tell you why they've disappeared :o(
I've learned to check more than one source as well as one in my climate because some books don't tell you about a plant's spreading ways or that plants behave differently in different climates creating a high maintenance garden or eyesore if we don't have time or talent to tend it properly.

Now that I check height, habit, reseeding, etc. I decide if it fits my situation or how willing I am to test it in the 'wrong place' to see if it still blooms or has good foliage or less spreading. For example, Monarda didyma in dry dappled shade slows it down to a crawl so might not work, but giving it another trial year as well as Mrs. Robb's wood spurge, Euphorbia amygdaloides robbiae in dry shade. Sometimes, cutting back hard towards end of flowering, but before seeds have ripened prevents too much spreading.

Look for key words like:
--mint family, square stemmed = spreads far & wide
--short-lived plant = self sows (survival depending on climate)
--fast growing or groundcover = chokes out other slower growing plants & be careful about location

Examples of plants we've used that don't fit a regular garden bed, but are suitable for difficult spots:
...around stepping stones near the outside faucet - Ajuga
...between house & sidewalk or driveway with fence in shade - Aegopodium podagraria 'Variegatum' Variegated Bishop's Weed
...between fruit trees in a long staggered ribbon with other garden spreaders around - common orange ditch day lily, Hemerocallis fulva
...easy care area of dry shade around a fir tree in woodland type surroundings - added Vinca major plants & columbine seeds to PNW natives already here. Trim the Vinca in spring yearly & CBAF (cut back after flowering) the columbine because of leaf miners, but not until seeds have matured & sowed themselves.
...spearmint & bee balm (Monarda didyma) kept in large sunken pots along fence with stepping stones in front for easy harvesting

If you want to grow some of the 'warned about plants' just make a new garden bed of spreaders & let them duke it out. We planted free plant swap spreaders in lasagna layers last spring, then in early summer added winter sown plants. We plan to add more in 2012 now that the layers have composted into soil and will find out how good or bad the 'misbehaving plants' are here.

Let's help other gardeners by sharing our experiences before they plant & regret it. What other seeds/plants should have warnings about spreading ways? How have you used them successfully in your gardens?

If you are asking about plants that should come with warnings, one of the worst in my garden was lysimachia ciliata 'Purpurea'. I bought it when newly introduced from a very upscale rare plant nursery, and fought it for about 5 years. Another was euphorbia dulcis 'Chameleon', which self sowed everywhere and promptly developed powdery mildew by late Spring. I heard Dan Hinkly say in a lecture one time, we no longer ship this. We just tell it the address where it is to go and it finds its own way there and establishes.

Neither of the above were really WS plants but self sowers and spreaders. I think my worst naturlized plant is still scilla though, I've been trying to dig it out, repeatedly cut it back so it won't flower and set seed, bury it, kill it, even poison it for more years than some of you are old. I've made great strides, but still find an occasional 'bluebell' popping up where I can't get at it, like through the roots of a rhododendron, or the one that is tight flush against the crown of an old rose where I have not been able to get the bulb.

Despite taking care, mix ups do happen. For example, a couple times I've mixed up the seeds and labels in containers. The first year I mixed up the Polemonium reptans and Lobelia cardinalis labels. Got LOTS of what I thought was jacob's Ladder, was very proud and posted a picture here, and someone gently pointed out that they looked like Lobelia. Which wasn't a terrible mistake because even though mislabeled I ended up with big patches of Cardinal flower that are so beautiful and the hummer's favorite.

The first year wsing Centranthus ruber they sprouted abundantly but I wondered why they were slowly dying. Well, I realized too late there were no holes in the container - they had drowned!

When you have all of this ground waiting for plants, you feel like you have to fill it, which starts with the wintersowing. I punched and cut sooo many gallon milk jugs and bought a LOT of potting soil other years and off I went to the races, doing jug after jug until I'd have well over one hundred, probably closer to two hundred. Of course, the plants don't all come up at the same time in the jugs and so I thought I wouldn't have a problem, just sow them as they pop up and get big enough and move onto the next bunch. Silly me didn't take into account, though, that I'd also have to keep up with the weeding in the meantime and that I wouldn't be able to keep up with that let alone keep planting more plants in the gardens. I'd end up having to transplant a lot of the plants into 4- and 6-packs, but then those would need watering more, meaning more time invested. I felt like Lucy in I Love Lucy, in the episode on which she and Ethel got a job on a production line in a candy factory and they couldn't keep up.

Well, this year, grass is getting planted in part of what's now dug up for garden, so I won't be needing nearly as many gallon jugs this year or potting soil. So I'll be saving some money, and I hope I don't move onto some other addiction. Wintersowing is so addicting! I almost salivate at the thought of putting potting soil into that first jug! lol I just love to look at the flowers in the spring and summer! Hi, I'm Cathy, and I'm a Wintersowaholic! :-O