Drink Milk? Make Plants!
Drink Milk? Make Plants!
Drink milk? Make plants! Did you know that if you drink milk, you can make your own plants? Well more specifically, if you have empty milk jugs you can start plants from seeds.
Oh now you tell me
I know, you wish you knew that before you threw out or recycled all this year’s jugs. Don’t fret too much. You still have plenty of time. You have friends, neighbors, or even family, that could save some for you?
Milk jugs? For what?
Glad you asked. Milk jugs make excellent containers for starting seeds in the winter. It is called winter sowing. Take a look here for all the details on the jugs.
You probably know about starting seeds indoors under lights. You may even do it yourself. Using the wintersowing method, there are no lights, no watering, no higher electric bill, and no hardening them off.
Hard plants??
Hardening off the plants is the process of getting your inside grown seedlings used to the great, or not so great, outdoors. Taking those pretty young plants from inside and just leaving them outside will most likely kill them.
It is a gradual, drawn-out, and time-consuming process. One that I am no good at doing, not at all.
Almost natural
With winter sowing, the plants are started outside almost as nature does it. No artificial light. No added heat. No extra watering.
Best of all, they are already used to the outdoors. The only hardening off they require is removing the tops of the jugs to allow more of the natural light and winds in.
What seeds?
Just about any plant that sets seeds in the summer or fall can be winter sown successfully. If the seeds naturally go through winter before germinating, they are good candidates for winter sowing.
This is called cold stratification. Many seeds need a cold period to help break down their outer coating before germination.
Lowering the volume
Nature has lots of ways to prevent success for seeds. Critters eat them. Floods wash them away. Seeds wind up in bad areas. The list goes on and on.
To offset this, nature usually makes lots and lots of seeds. A large volume with limited success is still lots of new starts. You want a higher success with a lower volume of seeds.
Best of both
Those nice milk jugs provide the best of both worlds. A limited number of seeds outside in their natural environment. Combine that with a safe and cozy container to keep out the bad stuff and some nice soil to grow in.
If you want to see what my wintersowing area looks like, take a look at this video. This is Mike McGroarty with me on a cold rainy day in March a few years ago.
Slow but steady
These seeds may not grow as fast as their counterparts indoors under the bright light. But they are steadily getting stronger as they grow. We’ll leave the animals out of it, but you know that slow and steady wins.
Early start on the garden too
It’s not really winter sowing as much as early spring sowing, but veggies can be started like this as well. I can’t give first-hand knowledge of this since I don’t do it.
I have grower friends that do some of their garden starts like this and it gives them extra vigor and a head start as well. Not to mention not buying starts at the store. Here is a link for some timing guidelines for when to start your garden seeds.
