Thank-you both for your suggestions. I have actually sown using milk jugs before and last yr I went a step further, I cut the bottoms off the milk jugs and sunk them in holes where I wanted the plants to grow permanently and then I pulled the milk jugs out when the seedlings were ready...sort of like a cloche. Problem is I live in a "wild" area. It is wooded and full of raccoons, bears, mice, moles, woodchucks etc etc and over the winter the mice (or something else) found many of my seeds. Raccoons are extremely handy at handling milk jugs and so really the only safe place for my milk jugs is the elevated back deck as there is no easy tree access for curious raccoons. I am usually gone for a couple of months in winter and with the drought we are having I guess I'm wondering if there will be enough snow to keep the jugs moist but maybe this doesn't matter if I, as you both said I should, soak before sowing.
One other ?...if I were to put my seeds in vermiculite and bag them and leave the bags outside, I assume that with the outside being colder than a conventional fridge that even if I were to leave them longer than the suggested stratification time they would not germinate until the outdoor temps rise in the Spring? Thanks for your help!
