 Hello and welcome to Getting Clean on the Prairies. We're out here in my garden. I've just put together some more winter sowing jugs and just adding him them to the snow bank here out in my garden. It is a freaking cold day today. It's minus 23 degrees Celsius, which I believe is about minus 9 Fahrenheit. The temperature is going to drop to about minus 30 degrees Celsius overnight, so these things are definitely going to be frozen solid and it looks like we're in for a cold spell for quite a while. It's the end of January, so we still have a ways to go. So I'm going to put these in the snow here and I'll take you into the garage where it's a lot warmer and we'll show you how we've got these planted up today. So as you've seen maybe in my other winter sowing videos, if you watch them, I always say that you put a marker inside the jug and write what's planted in there in case you're writing on the exterior of the container wears off during the winter season. I used a bunch of knives last time because I have an excess amount. So I just want to show you something else that I use as well and that is cutting up these plastic containers, whether it's a sour cream or a margin container, yogurt container. It's kind of a nice way to use them up if you don't want to purchase a plastic marker or markers if you're just kind of a cheapy like me, so I can just make a whole bunch out of one container here. I'm just going to cut them off and show you how they work. So they're just from the, then I just take the end and make a B cut like that so that you can stick it in the dirt. So that's what we'll be using today to mark what we're planting in our winter sowing. We're going to start off by moisting up our potting soil here. I have 50-50 mechs of potting soil and some peat moss. So today we are going to plant up some perennial flowers and some strawberries from what I've read about winter sowing and from my past experience. These are, work well using the winter sowing method because these kind of seeds need to go through the stratification process where they need to be frozen for a period of time or very cold for a period of time and then the seeds will naturally break down and sprout in the spring when the time is right. So we're going to do some chamomile. I did some last year using winter sowing and had some success with those. I bought some purple cornflower, echinacea perporea. That is also a recommended seed to try using the winter sowing method so we're going to give that a try. And I also want to try strawberries because I've read that the seeds, strawberry seeds are perennials or strawberry plants are perennials and the cold stratification process is something that they would go through naturally if they were growing outdoors. So I'm going to try starting them this way and see how it goes. Reading the back of this one seed here, this is an alpine strawberry. It says here that it is for the more experienced gardener. I don't know what that means, it kind of scares me but we're going to give it a try. And this one here is the fresca strawberry. I've also started some of these using my indoor hydroponic method so keep watch for those video updates as well because I have some sprouting now indoors. So let's plant these up. So also in today's video we are going to test out some different types of containers rather than using the traditional milk jugs that you normally see people using for winter sowing. I've read a lot on Facebook groups and different winter sowing videos that sometimes people say they don't have these, they don't use these kind of jugs in their home so what else can I use? So I think it's just a matter of looking around your house and checking out different sizes of containers and you know there's a lot of different ones that will work out there. This is a, I think it was just cranberry juice, it was a epsom salts. So I'm going to try that out. I drilled a bunch of holes in this lid because I thought leaving the lid off might be too big an opening and of course I have the holes drilled in the bottom. This is an ice cream container. It's got kind of the same opaque type as the milk jugs I think so it should let in light and also the lid I just drilled a whole bunch of extra holes in it as well as holes at the bottom. So we're going to give that a try. Here we have quite a few of those containers, sadly we really like ice cream here and go through a lot and Chapman's is the best. Also I have a takeout dish from Boston Pizza, it's, I got about two inches of dirt in there and I'm going to try it and see. These are great for indoor growing starts as well but I thought we might as well see how it works in the winter sowing method. So again holes in the top, holes in the bottom. So we're going to start with planting the chamomile here and I'm going to use this container. Chamomile seeds are very tiny, you can see there. So I'm just going to sprinkle a light layer all over the top here, probably a little more generous than you would do normally I guess but when they're this fine I just find this the easiest way to do it. And I'm just going to put a light layer of dirt over the top and I got my little homemade label already written up here with chamomile, today's date January 23rd. Now this has to be stuck in there kind of low because of the lid, we'll see how that fits. I'm going to just give a little turn to the side so it fits in here and the lid seems to snap on fairly tight so I'm not going to worry about putting any duct tape on there and I'm going to write on the outside as well. So the strawberry fresca package I had only had about maybe eight seeds left in it, very very tiny so I spread them out very carefully, we'll see how that goes. So we're going to use the ice cream container to plant up the alpine strawberries here and these are pelleted seeds so they have a coating on them so they're a little easier to to see and work with. So we're going to just spread out a more generous amount of these because I have, it's apparently I have 125 seeds in here and these normally would you would start indoors 10 to 14 weeks before the last frost which would be probably for us here in zone three would be you know close to the end of February. So we'll see how these work so as you can see here point a few of them in there so another light layer make sure they're got a bit of coverage on them again this has a good snap tight lid here so no duct tape required I forgot to put my marker inside okay so I have a marker with the date and the kind of strawberry these are okay so the last thing we're going to plant up here is the cone flower I'll just show you what these seeds look like they're quite a bit bigger quite a bit easier to work with so these are a hardy perennial for my zone here in zone three Saskatchewan and a lot of people grow them so I'm hoping to get these going in my perennial garden so that they'll come back every year. So we're going to use this container plant these up try to spread them out I'll just add a few more in here just to be sure so there's probably over 20 seeds in there so I have my little marker made here I need to buy a fine tip marker I only have a thick black marker here so it's a little harder to write the small print on here but I should be able to figure out that this is a cone flower stick it in here now we just need to duct tape these containers shut so I'm using my funky colored duct tape that I bought I could also use clear packing tape I've always used duct tape it's worked okay for me make sure you stretch out a big enough piece to get all the way around just kind of hold the lid in place don't worry about it's sticking yet till you get all the way around a nice overlap and then just go around and seal it all up really good this one's ready to go so before I take them outside and stick them in the snowbank I always like to give them a little extra bit of moisture to wake up so I put them in a tray like this this is just an aluminum turkey roaster type thing from the dollar store so I'll just put a few inches of water in here and let them sit and wick it up as much as they need just to make sure the the soil is really well moist saturated with moisture and it will freeze probably pretty quick out there today because it is pretty cold here and yeah we will just send these guys out to the snowbank with the other ones that are already out there and I will be planting up some herbs and some other cool crop lettuces here shortly so stay tuned for the next video