I sowed these Iris bracteata and Lilium washingtonianum (maybe Fritillaria) seeds on 11/29/2024 and they finally germinated this year.
3 Iris germinated around at the end of March, 2 more early fall and now the rest!
The Lilium did not germinate at all last year.
I rarely watered them and just made sure the soil never got hydrophobic. They had lids on last year to keep the weather out and lived out in the open. I took the lids off around April 2025 and they have been the north side of a building under an eave like this since then. I used the cheapest bag of potting soil from the local nursery.
Keep your ungerminated winter sowing!
by 102dicien
5 Comments
Good to know! This is my first year doing jug germination and I’d been wondering what to do if they don’t sprout
Agree to give them some more time! ⬆️
MN, Zone 5a, Ecoregion 51a here.
We winter sow wildflowers in Nov, Dec our C(30), (60), in salad clamshells. We had several warm dry winters & one seeding (can’t remember which now) took 2 winters to sprout. We figure it’s like seeds in the “wild”, they are just dormant until the right conditions.
Good Luck! 💚
I winter sowed Shooting Star (primula meadia) in March of 2024. It looked like something germinated and then died back last year. It’s still in the milk jug waiting for this spring!
And I thought we were “bad” for keeping some well into summer! This is honestly incredible and we’ll likely keep any thanks to this!
WOAH