You might be wondering why I’m featuring snow-covered milk jugs as my photo of the week.
Not the kind of photos of birds, nature, art, or murals I’ve posted as my photo of the week in the past.
They’re part of my winter sowing project I started in mid-February: using milk jugs as mini-greenhouses outside in winter to sow native perennial plants.
I learned about winter sowing a couple years ago, but never tried it.
This year, I attended a winter sowing workshop at Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Which resulted in me bringing home five milk jugs planted with purple coneflower, wild strawberry, Eastern columbine, wood aster, and gayfeather.
What is Winter Sowing?
The concept behind winter sowing is to grow your plants outside with no artificial lights. (The method was created by Trudy Davidoff in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture.)
You fill plastic gallon-size milk jugs, or other similar containers with soil, plant seeds, and leave the jugs outside in a sunny place with the lids off.
The seeds are protected from wind, benefiting from the warmth created by sunshine, and will naturally germinate.
One of the benefits of winter sowing: plants don’t need to harden off (transition to the outside environment).
Native plants naturally reseed on their own and germinate, but the milk jug creates a protected environment.
My native perennial seeds in the milk jugs haven’t sprouted yet, but I’ve noticed many of my perennials in the garden have sprouted. So I expect the seeds in the mini-greenhouses to sprout soon.
If you’re interested, the Almanac has a good winter sowing article about how to get started and Piedmont Master Gardeners goes into more details about winter sowing.
