 Hi there and welcome to the channel. So on today's video, we are out in my garage and we are getting some more winter sewing jugs ready to go out into the snowbank. And I'm going to show you how I am going to be planting up some different vegetables, flowers, and some grasses as well. So if this is your first time joining my channel, my name is Tracy and my husband Preston and I are empty nesters, grandparents, full-time workers, and farmers living on the prairies in Saskatchewan Canada. So my channel is all about how to grow in a cold climate with a short growing season as well as lots of indoor growing during the winter using hydroponics. So it is a super sunny day out there and it's kind of affecting my filming so I had to kind of pull my camera away from the window right now. But I am going to show you a variety of different seeds that I'm going to be planting up that I want to try. We've had some unusual warm weather here on the prairies where the temperatures have risen above freezing which is not typical for February and it does have an effect on things because of course it starts melting and we had some rain which causes a lot of ice. So when it's warm like that of course things start melting sooner than they should and it can affect things such as your winter sowing because you don't want those containers to warm up too much right now and for those seeds to get confused and start germinating. But for the most part here the temperatures fall well below freezing at night. We've had a stretch here where it's been above zero during the day. But I've kept the jugs that I already have out there well insulated in some snow. I keep them out of the sun. They don't really need to be in the sun right now until it's time for them to start warming up and germinating. So I have another eight jugs already set up with soil in them and I've also set them up in a tray and full of water just so they can soak up as much moisture as possible and once we plant the seeds we'll give them a good spring on the top, seal them up and take them outside. So I'm going to try a couple of perennial flowers that I have not had success with in the past but I'm going to give it another try. We have the bergamot and an aster. These are both perennials that are hardy to zone three here so they should be a hardy perennial that you know hopefully will germinate so we're going to give this a try. I got this red amaranth seed from Acid Exchange two years ago and just started them indoors and had just one grow and it was such a beautiful plant to have in the flower beds that I want to try growing more this year. So I'm going to try them in the winter sowing method to see if they work. Strawberries is another thing that I should work with this process because they do need to go through stratification. I've kept these seeds in the freezer, brought them out and I'm going to try a few in the winter sowing jugs and see what happens. And ornamental grasses has been something that I've been really challenged to get the right seed that works in our zone. Last year I started some Pampas grass indoors and moved them outside in the spring. They were lovely grasses in my flower beds but they didn't flower because apparently they take two years. So those are not hardy to our zone but this one that I got from West Coast Seed should flower in mid-August, end of July, mid-August. So we're going to try them in the winter sowing method and maybe also try some direct sowing. And also from West Coast Seeds I got a couple different onions that I'm excited to try. Last year was my first year starting onions from seeds indoors and then transplanting them out to the garden. And I want to try using the winter sowing method as well, see if that works. And I also got some other red bunching onions that we're going to give a try too as well. Okay, so I already got a few of these planted up already. I actually had some technical difficulties with my camera and didn't have the volume on. So I had already planted up the asters, the bergamot and the walla walla onions. And I realized when I was on my third jug here that I forgot to mark everything. So that's something to keep in mind when you're doing this to make sure as soon as you get your seeds in here that you put in your marker so that you keep track of what's in there because once you start throwing dirt on these seeds you kind of forget what's there. So I always like to reuse plastic knives or spoons because I seem to have an abundance of those and write the name of the plant, the date that I planted it, stick it inside the jug. Once I tape these up with the duct tape I also write the date on the outside but just in case it weathers off over the season you still have a marker inside to keep track. So the walla walla onions have gone in here and once I've got everything planted up I'll give everything a light layer of potting soil. I've mentioned on previous videos that you should always use a really good high quality potting soil. So make sure that you are using that in your containers. Don't use anything from your garden or reuse soil from outdoor containers because those will bring a lot of weeds into your winter sowing jugs. So I'll just show you how I'm going to plant up these second types of onions. These are the Cabernet so they're a nice red onion. I'm really hopeful to get nice big bulbs this year with my onions. Now I will put the link below to the West Coast seeds. I am partnered up with them as an affiliate so if you choose to make a purchase through my link below they will pay me a small commission at no extra cost to you and it just helps out my channel a little bit so if you want to use that link I'd be greatly appreciated. I really like their website. They have lots of great seeds and they are from Western Canada on the Coast Vancouver area. So I'm just putting you know a fairly generous sprinkling of the seeds all over here and they don't need a lot of dirt on top of them so I will put a light layer at the end here. So as I mentioned earlier this is a ruby grass that I want to try growing. I really love ornamental grasses in my flower beds and I want to try and get a nice good crop of them going this year so I can put them in pots and different areas in the perennial beds. So in growing sowns 3, 4, 5, 6 such as here on Saskatchewan in zone 3 this would be more of an annual type but I'm hoping that I will see some blooms. So there's only 50 seeds per pack and they're very tiny so I'm going to try to just use half of them in here and save half for starting indoors under grow lights. Like I said I tried strawberries before in this method with they did not germinate so I'm not confident we're going to give it one more try this year to see what happens. So if I can get a good crop of these going this year in my flower beds I should be able to collect seeds from these. I think they're fairly easy to get seeds from but I'm just going to sprinkle a pretty heavy layer of these around on the dirt. There's a lot of non-seed material in this as well but we'll just hope that there is some seeds in there. And the last jug I'm going to plant up today is going to be some of these Rosa Lunga Onions which is kind of like a red onion it looks like they kind of are like a bunching small onion that I think would be nice to have in salads and it maybe you know can even spend most of its time in this container without having to transplant but we'll see what it turns out like in the spring. Again I'm putting a fairly thick layer of these seeds on top of the soil. These jugs have soaked up all this water already I'm just going to put another good dose in the bottom here and then we're going to add some soil to the tops of these jugs and give them a good spray. The jugs tucked away here in the snow the warm weather this week did melt quite a bit the snow that I had around these other jugs from January but I'm just going to insulate them throw a little snow around everything here just keep everything well insulated and we don't want anything to start sprouting until mid-April early May so the temperature today is now minus 15 degrees Celsius so it's good and cold everything should freeze up real good tonight and just stay here and wait until spring.