has anyone used the winter sowing method with daylily seeds?

I sowed my first seeds a couple of weeks ago. So far one seed has sprouted. I keep forgetting to bring the pots in at night. That probably has something to do with it.

I did bring them in this morning and probably won't put them outside again until spring.

I have a bunch more seeds to plant.

I have had mixed results with winter sowing. When planting directly in the garden, many of the seeds hooved up out of the ground during the winter months and then froze out. Not to mention that weed seeds did sprout and outgrew the daylily seedlings! When I planted in big tubs, I was mistaken to think that the seeds would be OK if they got frozen... WRONG! If the seeds begin to sprout and then become frozen, they are gonners. Best to plant later and allow the seeds to chill just before a natural spring unless you intend to keep them indoors under lights or in a greenhouse. I grow mine indoors under lights after planting seeds in deep cat litter trays and start them after Jan 1st here in Ohio. The seedlings will be good sized by the time I plant them in the garden in May after danger of frost has passed. There are endless ways of doing it based on your own personal preferences, but I just mix all of my seeds together.... I do lose a few, but I always have way more than I need anyhow.

Planting daylily seeds directly in the ground outside late in the autumn has not worked well for me. A significant proportion of the seeds do not germinate in the spring. I may experiment with how I plant seeds in the autumn to see if I can get a better percentage of survival but for any crosses that are important and have only a small number of seeds I would start them inside.

I'm in a colder zone, so maybe my comments shouldn't count. But early on in my hybridizing I experimented with this. I sowed a row of seeds in the late, late fall, like way too close to when the grounds starts to freeze. And then the next spring, I planted a row right next to using the same seeds.

I gained plants from both sets of directly sown seeds. More Spring seeds germinated than fall seeds. The Spring seedlings grew to maturity (started blooming) sooner than the fall grown seeds, for the most part. But there were plenty of successful plants from fall-sown seeds. Finally, none of the directly sown seeds germinated at the high rates I get with seeds I start indoors in February and plant outside around Mother's Day.

Also, our ground freezes hard and many inches deep. That may be why more spring-sown seeds germinated than fall-sown seeds. But it didn't seem to make that much difference.

I've been thinking about this a lot this year. I'm not getting any younger, and it's a ton of extra effort and resources to plant seeds indoors over winter, water them, feed them, and then go out and plant them when it's warm enough in the spring. So even if my germination percentage isn't nearly as good as seeds started indoors overwinter, I can just plant more seeds directly outside and all it will cost me is maybe an extra year of development before I can truly evaluate them.

I think starting indoors will definitely give you better germination rates,and that early start to first bloom . For me I don't think I would be dedicated enough to keep them alive.
I start my seeds in a cold frame, starting after 4 weeks stratification usually from mid Sept. thru mid Oct. Give or take a couple wks. ( pictures below ).
Germination is not as good as indoor, but better than direct sown ,spring or fall. Most years I get 60 - 70 percent germination.






The bubble wrap you see is not put on until the coldest part of winter.
It is just stapled to the wooden frame. The vent is a concrete foundation vent, open automatically at 40 - 70 degrees.
Those pictures were taken in Dec. Iam in zone 6b, Jan and Feb. are usually our coldest months. You may not even need the extra protection of the bubble wrap.

That looks like an impressive system!