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Hello all - my first post on DG. Some brief background: I'm currently engaged in the lengthy process of naturalizing my entire back yard with Western New York-native forbs, grasses, and shrubs. I'm following the "plant communities" approach, building around what's already there. By this stage I'm no longer a total novice, but I don't exactly have a great track record either. Last year I tried cold/moist stratification with late spring sowing for seeds of the following species: iris versicolor, caltha palustris, lobelia cardinalis, & lobelia syphilitica. Exactly NONE of the seeds germinated. So I'm definitely going to go with winter sowing this year. I had actually planned to do it in November or December, but got busy and am still kicking myself for not having gotten it done. I'm going to have to wait until this fall at this point, I think.
(I've also changed my mind about the species I want: I planted a lobelia cardinalis and a lobelia syphilitica from containers last spring, and the cardinalis died, while the syphilitica required massive watering due to the horrible midsummer drought. While parts of my yard are soaked in spring, even those parts got dusty in summer, so I'm going to go with more versatile plants this time.)
That brings me to my dumb questions. The first is: Why sow in containers rather than in the place where you want the plants to grow permanently? From what I've read, winter snow and ice do a good job of "planting" seeds that are sown on the top of the soil in the fall. The "lessons learned" thread also seemed to provide a lot of reasons why sowing in containers can be tricky. Removing the transplanting phase, at the very least, seems to take one element of risk out of the equation.
The second question is: What about flowers that go to seed in late spring? Specifically, woodland forbs like trillium and dicentra cucullaria/canadensis. Is it acceptable to sow these seeds in late spring or early summer? After all, that is precisely the time when the seeds would be dispersed in the wild. Since the rationale of winter sowing is to replicate Mother Nature's process, summer sowing seems like the logical equivalent for these early-blooming native forbs. Everything I've read suggests that native grasses, at least, can be sowed virtually any time of year, as they do not even require stratification.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
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