Fall Sowing for Cold Stratification – Anna's Therapeutic Garden

Sowing seeds in the fall to allow for cold stratification: This is how I’m doing it this year.

Buckets Of Breeze — Buckets of breeze for this year’s potting soil mixture

The weather has warmed up a bit last week. Armed with new potting soil recipes for plants native to this region, I’d mixed and filled up a whole bunch of potting pots with the mixture.

I made a checklist of all the seeds I had — from last year’s seed packet leftovers to this year’s seeds packets, harvests, & swaps. And yes, I did this on Trello.

Trello List Native Seeds Part I — *A Trello list showing some of the completed items.*

Next I noted on each their germination code(s).

Then I resorted my seeds checklist with the easy drag-and-drop– first with all the C(60)’s , from the oldest & fewest, to the more recent and in bulk. And continued in much the same way with the C(30)s , C(10)s, A’s, rounding out the last with nonnative kitchen staples and annual herbs.

Thank you Prairie Moon for making this easy!  

For more information on types of germinations, see their   https://www.prairiemoon.com/how-to-germinate-native-seeds.html

Then yesterday, on the warmest day of the week’s forecast I knew just what I was gonna do: spend the day outside! I laid out the flats of pots filled with soil along the north side of the shed, and gathered up all the C(60) seeds from the garage. Armed with my Trello list, clipboard and pen, painter tape and permanent marker, I emptied out the seed packets, then moved on to the ones in oatmeal containers.

And as I went, I noted on my clipboard which flats were sown, and with which seeds, marking the one-offs pots, pressing and tampering the seeds firmly into the soil, and finally checking it off the Trello list.

I soon ran out of pots, not to mention was also getting quite low on some components of this potting soil mixture but it was sure satisfying to check off all the C(60)s I had.

This is because LAST year… I made the mistake of starting a little bit of everything I had, and by the time I got to the next round of sowing (having run out of dirt & pots), there weren’t enough cold days left of winter to start more C(60)s. Which is why all the partial seed package leftovers to kick off this year’s round! …

This year’s mistake seems to be that I … still(!!) don’t have enough potting soil to get this all done in one go.

Seed Storage Oatmeal Containers — I repurpose oatmeal containers for seed saving.

Anna Fall Sowing 12 22 2024 — A warmish, overcast day was perfect for getting the job done.

Atg Anna And Josie — And always more fun with company to help.

Today, it snowed all day. Everything’s under a nice cozy blanket of snow.

Yay!

Next warm day, when my bag of soil is thawed out, I’ll have more pots, as well as more ingredients ready to make up more potting soil mix, and I’ll finish up the rest of the seeds.