Good point, Karen. Her website has to be rebuilt, so I can't link to it.
As I recall, she had a variation on winter-sowing where she used very coarse vermiculite (nothing else mixed with it), dampened it, sowed seeds, and then sealed it tight with no air holes or drain holes.
I forget whether she kept the WS containers indoors, outdoors under cover, or outdoors and exposed.
My last two photos are just a thin layer of medium vermiculite over a random bark-peat mix. It as the first time i winter-sowed and was really just learning. The only ones that worked were penstemon, that sprouted and grew so slowly that I almost threw them away, thinking they were algae growing on the vermiculite or Perlite.
Then I had a similar problem to yours. The Penstemon grew so slowly that they were still around 1/2 inch tall many months later, and they dried out in a temporary cold frame. I don't think that was any effect of the vermiculite layer, just Penstemon growing slowly as they tend to do.
But that reminds me of another popular seed-starting method: Deno's paper-towel-and-baggie method. I'll go bk and add that.
