On February 25th, 16 of us gathered in Bob Cassidy's garage fr a winter sow for our Pollinator Garden. Great! So what is a winter sow anyway? Here is what Webster has to say about it. Winter sowing is an outdoor method of starting seeds and it requires plastic containers like milk or juice cartons), soil, seeds and Mother Nature. By growing your own plants from seeds, you can several hundreds of dollars each each year. 
To properly set the stage for this operation, it is important to point out that Bob's garage is NOT heated. And, by the way, it was all of 10 degrees F that day! Fortunately we were fortified by hot coffee and donuts. President Dawn provided a batch of blue and yellow Rotary beanies to keep our heads warm. You will recall last summer (2022) we obtained all the permits for our Pollination Garden and worked with the DPW to clear the space of all grown and covered the area with cardboard and wood chips. It will stay in that condition until late summer/fall of 2023 when we will start planting the flowers. The flowers we started with out winter sow last Saturday. It was a surprisingly simple task.
- First we collected milk containers (the clear ones, that you can see through)
- Then we cut them almost in half, leaving about 2 inches to create a hinge
- We were given seed packets courtesy of Freddie Gillespie of the Southborough Open Space Preservation Commission. Freddie has been a good mentor for us for this entire project and is guiding us every step of the way.
- Then we filled the bottom half of each container with potting soil and watered them and then added the seeds.
- All that was left was to tape the jugs closed and put them outside where they will stay for the rest of the winter.
- In May we will remove the top of the containers, water the soil and hope our flowers will grow!
Later in the year we will hopefully transplant these seedlings into the new Pollination Garden.
A big thanks to everyone who came out to join us in this endeavor. Special thanks to Marc Hamilton for the photos.