text: 1 plant / 4in pot. An explosion of 4-6″ flowers in the rich colors of fall. Flowers seem to glow in an array of gold, bronze, orange and scarlet tones with lots of bicolors. Well-branched tall 7ft. plants with numerous flowers over a long season. Good bird food selection with lots of oil-rich seeds.
  
  Here is how I will be starting seeds in my hoop house in early March. Thought I would share as it is a very good method for winter sowing. Since heat rises, it is a good idea to store these mini pop bottle greenhouses up high. So the bottles are supported by the caps, at the top of the hoop house. I am also going to put some in the covered raised bed, but in this part of the greenhouse the temperatures can get well over 30 Celsius even in -10 Celsius weather, so I will have to be careful doing this. You could also use smaller water bottles for this as well. Eventually, the plastic will need to be recycled but in the meantime rather than just throw away your bottles to be recycled immediately, why not upcycle them for a few years of use right? I am also using rotten straw as a potting soil substitute, it works really well and I grow everything in straw from straw bales that have been conditioned with fertilizer to aid in composting. So no need to buy potting soil. You will have to ignore the condition of the seedlings in the picture, I planted those in November and they have been dormant all winter. Also, make sure you drill holes in the bottom of the bottles for drainage.
  Just in case anyone is wondering, the bottles are cut around the bottom and the wire is holding them back together. The wire I used is a piece of steel tig welding wire, similar to that of a clothes hanger. which would also work. When you want to remove the plants, just remove the wire. To water, the plants just unscrew the bottle from the lid and use a bottle like a dish soap bottle to put water in there, or a spray bottle. These do not need to be watered very often especially in cold weather, I would say once every 2-3 weeks, in the winter even less.
  I am hoping that March will have enough hours of sunlight in my region compared to February. As you can see in this picture, it is still pretty cold in the pop bottles to support healthy growth at this time of the month in February, which is also the coldest time of year in Ontario. It is -7C (20F) outside windchill of -13C (9F) but as you can see the pop bottles inside are 5.5C (42 F) just as the sun is setting (and I opened the greenhouse door a lot today which didn't help.). I think that as we get into March in Ontario and we see daily temps above freezing, this should provide enough warmth in the bottle to start seedlings. The only other issue would be available sunlight hours which I think will be good enough to start an early crop in the pop bottles and be able to move them to the raised bed about a month later.