 Hi there and welcome to the channel. So today I'm out in the garage doing some more winter sewing and today's video is going to be all about starting herbs using the winter sewing method. So not only is growing herbs in your garden a great way to have fresh herbs all summer long that you can use in your cooking and if you can't keep up to all the fresh herbs you can always dry them and store them over the winter for your cooking and to make different spice blends. But did you also know that herbs are a great companion to have in your garden? They attract all sorts of beneficial insects such as butterflies and bees. So these types of herbs will attract those bad insects and keep them away from your tomatoes, your peppers. Sometimes the smell that the herbs give off confuses the insects so that they can't get to your vegetables. So we're going to plant up a variety of these today. We'll go through a little more detail on what I'm planting and what they are good for in your garden. So I think I have eight containers here ready to plant up and I've tried to narrow down my herbs to eight. Basil of course is something that everybody should have in their garden. It's wonderful to eat fresh. It's a great companion herb to have around your tomatoes so I always try to get as much basil going as I can. I'm going to try some in the winter sewing method. Probably do some from seed indoors and I also have it growing in my Aero garden indoors this winter. So dill is something that I'm sure everybody also wants to have in their garden. They work great at repelling cabbage moths and also attract butterflies. The mint here I usually try to get some of that going every summer in my garden. I like to harvest it for tea and to make different body care products out of. But also the scent of it is good at attracting aphids and other bad insects that may be getting at your vegetables. Mint will help protect them. And parsley is such a hardy herb. It's probably the most hardy herb that you can find that grows well here in the cold climates such as mine. So this is something that I always get going in my garden and plant amongst my vegetables and it can be direct sown early in the spring. But we're going to try some in the winter sewing method. I've planted this up before using jugs and it actually grows really well that way. I will also be planting up some borage which is great at repelling pests and attracting those beneficial insects. Cilantro is something that I have planted using the winter sewing method before and it always seems to come really well in the winter sewing method. So I will be doing a batch of this even though I don't like cilantro. There's a lot of people in my family who do so I always try to grow it and again it's a great attractor of beneficial insects and those butterflies and bees to your garden. So when it comes to doing your winter sewing you see in most of the videos that the traditional method is to use a milk jug like this which is very ideal and it makes a great mini greenhouse. But sometimes these are hard to come by. We don't use these kind of milk jugs in our homes so I have to go around scrounging from friends and family. I know in some provinces in Canada they don't even get milk in plastic jugs. They only get one bag so it's not an option for them. So you know just look around and see what else you have that will work as a mini greenhouse. So as you can see here I have some juice jugs, a climato juice jug. This is a vinegar jug and even a small one like this. This is also just a vinegar jug. Could work. It doesn't have as large a surface area to plant in. So for today when I'm doing herbs I'm going to kind of look at my my selection of herbs and see what I really don't need a whole bunch of and you can use something like this as well. So as always I start off my winter sowing process here by getting the soil nice and moist. I like to use the the wicking system and fill the tray that they are sitting in with water. Let it wick up from the bottom and then also give it a good top watering once we got the seeds planted. So I'm going to start off with one of these jugs here that's a good replacement if you don't have any of the milk jugs. It's still got a nice big surface area. It's clear so it lets in a lot of the sunlight and the heat. Just make sure you remove the cap, make your hinged top lid and always have some holes in the bottom for good drainage. So I'm going to use this for my borage. There's not a whole pile of seeds in here but I'm going to put them all in because I like to heavily seed when I'm doing the winter sowing just to help ensure success. We'll cover it with another light layer of the potting soil. So my potting soil is a mixture that I have made myself. It consists of peat moss, vermiculite or perlite and that I have at a 2 to 1 ratio, two parts peat moss, one part vermiculite or perlite. And because these seeds are going to be in these containers for a period of time they need to also have some nutrients in the soil so unlike a starting mix that you would have indoors for your seedlings I've also added in some organic fertilizer and some mushroom compost. So this will make a nice little home for the seeds right up until the time it's ready to harden them off and plant them into your garden. And I always make sure I put a marker inside my jug just in case the writing on the exterior of the jug kind of fades or washes off in the spring and do it before you move on to the next one so you don't forget what you planted. So some of the other herbs that you want to make sure that you have in your garden that I'm just not doing today would include thyme, oregano, rosemary. I find rosemary did not work well for me using the winter sowing method. It's very slow to grow and it's something that you either want to buy from the greenhouse you know an already established plant to put into your garden or start it indoors like right about now early February so that you have a good sized plant to put outdoors come spring. As mentioned I said you can even use these smaller containers this is just a mini vinegar jug we're going to use it to try planting up some cilantro. I used to consider I've had pretty good success with cilantro I don't have a ton of seeds left so that's why I'm gonna just make use of the smaller container. So I do have a lot of herbs started indoors right now using my Ido hydroponic system and that is where I have my oregano and thyme and rosemary started. Those are all great to have in your garden to deter cabbage moths so if you have the brassicas growing in your garden such as the cabbage broccoli cauliflower you might want to think about putting some of those herbs nearby. Something else that I've learned the hard way when I'm going to plant things and this is not just you know winter sowing but when I'm going to set up some seeds I think I have a lot of seeds and then when I go to actually do the planting I realize that there's very few in the package and I'm a little bit short so when you're going through your seeds and planning out your garden make sure you open up the package and actually have a look and see what how much is in there make sure you have enough in case you need to make another run to the seed store to get more. So I have a lot of people ask me when is the best time to winter sowing? Is it too early to start? Is it too late to start? So I am here in growing zone 3 and my last frost date is about the third week of May. So in the colder zones like 3, 4, 5 most of us have that last frost date sometime in May. I try to backtrack about a month prior to that and you want those winter sowing jugs to make sure that they go outside and that they get frozen solid. You don't want to move them out too late in the season so I try to shoot for middle of March. If you have a very cold spring you know maybe right till the end of March. As long as they freeze these seeds need to go through the stratification process so that is when the seeds are frozen and the spring thaw comes and they kind of are thawed and frozen a few times it kind of wears down that outer shell on the seed and helps it with germination. So that is what we call stratification and that's what winter sowing kind of mimics. So if these seeds were in the ground all winter they would go through that process of spring thaw and kind of breaking down that outer shell of the seed and when the time is right they know when to start germinating. Sage is one of the ones that I have very few seeds left so I'm just going to use a small container like this for today. So I usually have a good patch of chives coming back every spring in my garden which is great. They work really good for repelling aphids and the Japanese beetle and they recommend you plant chives near peas, lettuce, celery or cucumbers. So I am doing peppermint right now and the seeds are super super tiny. I'm going to plant this whole package even though it's probably more than enough but you don't get a whole lot when you buy a pack of mint here and I know it can be very invasive in some gardens. For my climate here I don't seem to have an issue with anything getting too overgrown. It usually gets killed off over the winter so I am going to plant a good amount of mint in my garden. You can also put these into containers so that they're more contained and then just set them out amongst your your garden wherever you want to and that helps keep them from you know getting out of control and invading areas that you don't want them to. So right now we are in mid-February and we're having quite a warm spell so the temperatures are rising above freezing during the day so that is always a concern for people who winter sow and in our cold climates here you know sometimes we get these thaws or Chinook things warm up super fast and it could confuse your winter sowing seeds to think that it's spring when it's actually not so I always start off by putting my jugs somewhere just in the shade out of the wind away from the dog so that you know they're safe and you know the chances of them thawing out are pretty slim because we still get you know cold evenings and then when it comes time to think about them getting ready to germinate you know mid-march end of March that's when I start you know putting them out somewhere where they're going to get lots of sunlight they're going to warm up during the day and the jugs will keep them warm at night when the temperatures still drop below freezing and they will get going on germination. So again not too many parsley seeds I see in my pack here so I have just chosen a small container such as this little juice jug to plant them up. Last year I had a real failure with my winter sowing week we got a new puppy Jax which unfortunately we we lost him in an accident this spring but he was really interested in my winter sowing jugs as soon as I put them outside and I came home one day to find them pretty much 50% of them were strewn all over the yard all shook up and so my winter sowing success last year was pretty low I'm hoping that this year with with our new puppy I'll be a little more wiser about where I place these and keep them in a safe place and hopefully I will have lots of good updates on the winter sowing come spring that I can share with you and other videos. I think I'll probably be doing one more winter sowing video on my channel and that is going to be planting up some native flowers I got a whole bunch from a local grower here seeds that are native to the Saskatchewan prairies and they are perennial type flowers that should do well in the winter sowing method so right now I have those seeds sitting in the the freezer right now chilling them kind of helping them with that stratification and you can watch for another video coming on winter sowing native flowers brassicas are another really good thing to use this method because they are a real cold tolerant type vegetable that does well you know being out in the cold in the spring I personally don't grow brassicas yet I haven't really had a passion to grow them yet so but I do recommend if you're winter sowing that you try them if you like to grow them the other thing that works really well winter sowing is lettuces, kale, spinach, arugula those all do well because they're all cool tolerant plants as well I find Drex sowing them into my containers works really great so that's what I've been doing just because I don't have enough winter sowing jugs but if you want to do those those work really well in winter sowing as well something I don't know if I've noted on other videos is using a good quality duct tape seems to be important I purchased some of the cheaper stuff at the dollar store a couple years ago that you know those funky colors and different designs on it and when I went to remove that tape in the spring it was really hard to get off the jugs so I went back to the actual duct tape name brand for using on my winter sowing jugs and find that it it comes off a lot easier that way you can still recycle these if you want to at the end of the winter sowing season so I hope that you found my video helpful and I answered a few questions that you may have about winter sowing and about growing herbs in your garden all the benefits if you have any more questions about winter sowing or other gardening things please leave a comment below hit that like button and don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss out on future videos coming to the channel happy gardening