Bev, I'm not sure exactly what "herbstone" is ??? Can you enlighten me? Mine are just my own hirtas, a natural accident that developed from growing a couple of different green-eyed hirtas. One year they mutated to mostly doubles with green eyes. For a couple of years I have harvested seeds only from the doubles, and they have become relatively stable. I do get a few singles, but mostly doubles.
Emily, I first "found" wintersowing at gardenweb. There are lots of experts there who start perennials in summer using the basic WSing method as I described above, for plantout in fall. It works well for anything that doesn't require cold strat. But even some seeds which normally need cold strat to overcome dormancy will do well without if harvested from the plant and sown immediately while extremely fresh (think of columbine, digitalis, which volunteer like crazy in late summer as they fall from the plant...). Sowing in summer and planting out in fall gets them through that first year of sleep-creep-leap without taking up real estate all summer while doing so little. Those ruds were probably an inch tall when I planted them into that bed in fall. To expect them to babysit milk jugs too is pushing my luck. They wouldn't survive.
I rarely do this because I just get lazy and maybe overcome with garden maintenance during summer. Also, we usually go on vacation for a week or two in summer and my neighbors aren't exactly great gardeners. And they're pretty tired of trying to water all my plants in 90° weather in my absence. It takes a couple of hours.
Karen
