I plant mostly the same as normal. I do add extra seeds, especially when I first started.
The bean population has adapted enough that I have more consistent germination now but the weather here is so erratic I still plant extra just to be sure I have enough survivors to the end of the season.
I do not plant the beans deep, I’m sure that would lead to rot with my clay soil.
The corn does seem to benefit from deeper planting.
Good to know, thanks for going into more detail!
Lots of people do “winter sowing” in pots; they generally plant in late December or January, and let things come up on their own schedule. You can google guides to doing this; it is supposed to produce much more vigorous seedlings. The problem is that they still need transplanting. It is great to hear that some people are having luck with planting right in the ground!
I have a hunch that planting in late fall/early winter produces a very different effect on seeds than planting early. If you plant early during a warm spell, seeds will immediately come up, and seedlings may die in the next cold spell. But I think the experience of winter cold must set some sort of mechanism in the seed that makes it more discerning about when it comes up; otherwise, it would be hard to explain why volunteers seem to do well the next spring, whereas my earliest plantings often struggle.
This is a fascinating observation! this really inspires me to try this fall. Perhaps I will learn which crops shed more seed naturally and observe in the spring what pops up without any aid. I definitely saw this with zucchini, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, and butter nut, all volunteers from my compost pile. Oh there were also some amazing volunteer tomatoes! They were definitely those varieties that sell on the vine and the cherries on the vine. They were SO strong and produced tons of vines but even though they popped early and grew beautifully, they mostly didn’t ripen and what I brought inside had no flavor at all.
Last fall I planted muskmelons, watermelons, and tomatoes. The melons have come up, no problem. No sign of tomatoes yet, but I can work on that.
I just had volunteers in my little compost pile that was all the end of last year’s tomato plants. Our days have been anywhere from 40s to low 80s though. April has felt like early May usually does.
It is beautiful to experiment. Thanks so much for sharing this. So melons definitely made it. Have you noticed how from the hundreds of seeds that go into the compost pile or end up in the garden from fallen fruit, only a few make it… suppose that is the natural selection for those that can withstand the winter…
Or selection to withstand the conditions of the compost pile. Squash loves compost. 
My experiments this year have been inconclusive. Things came up well, but had trouble with subsequent dry spells; on my unirrigated plot, this resulted in the loss of plantings that could have survived otherwise with later planting ahead of rain.
Two, possibly three volunteer tomatoes. At least one is a beefsteak type. I suspect the other is one of Joseph’s Q series, but the location is uncertain.
The watermelons are putting on secondary leaves, but something kept eating them so I covered them. 5 left of the fall planted population.
Melons are gone and I’m not sure why. All died at the same time, which suggests something environmental. I’ll try them again in the fall.
Anecdotal, but here’s +1 example for getting a head start, at least for cool season crops like brassicas & carrots (calendula flowers quite happy, too).
Here’s a comparison from just now between where my end of season pile of discarded “low quality” & winnowed seed landed in compacted lawn soil vs my indoor started transplants in a bed amended with leaf mould compost. One of my goals is to start experimenting with more fall and late winter sowing of cold tolerant species using a high ratio of seeds to final number of desired plants to allow for heavy attrition & selection (and less work!).
This is beautiful! It is what I have observed also in a much lower scale. There’s a lot of potential in this I think but I need to figure out what works for my area. Thank you so much for sharing your pictures.
If you happen to remember, would you mind sharing results later in the season, once you harvest some of this?
Goodness! There’s so much to experiment, observe and learn!
I found one corn volunteer today, so that is obviously possible.
The broccoli that were planted this way have bolted; it is important to note that we had our warmest March on record (by a lot) followed by nearer-normal temps in April and May. A lot of our deciduous trees lost their leaves and had to grow a new set. So not a good year to try this out in. But, at the same time, this kind of thing is common in Colorado, so this maybe suggests that winter planting is not a good technique here.
Yeah, I can see that being a challenge if you regularly have large temperature swings in late winter/early spring. A head start doesn’t matter if hard freezes or unseasonably extreme heat (or both in succession) knocks your plants out.
Or at least, winter planting of some things. I winter planted both muskmelons and watermelons. Both had an early flush which died, and a 2nd flush which came up later.
Oh, interesting! Did they die all the way down to the stem, and then grow back from the roots? If melons and watermelons are able to do that after being hit by a frost, that would be awesome.
They will sometimes grow back, but the seed leaf joints need to be intact. They can’t grow back below that.
The initial group died entirely and new seedlings emerged from other seeds.
