I am in Bulgaria winter here is a 3 months affair and usually cold. I grow a lot of plants from seed - some might call it an obsession -as i save seed from just about every plant i grow and sow just to see if anything interesting as happened. Bulb seed i sow in September and October and with alpines i start in November, as some of the North Americans i grow need 3 months of cold before anything will happen. I wait until now to start sowing alpine seed that i know isn't too fussy about how much cold it gets. Pots are left outside and have been variously rained on, frozen solid and snowed on. Most mornings for the past few weeks have had hard frosts, but i am continually surprised that when the pots defrost i can find newly germinated seeds. Today i had Fritillaria raddeana, pyrenaica and lusitanica, Tulipa vvedenskyi, Leptodactylum californicum, Lathyrus roseus and Eremostachys molucelloides. Once pots germinate they go into a frame to keep the worst of the weather off them.
