Enjoyed the links posted here. Here's my own 2 cents on this. I do all the seeding for a CSA (about 70 boxes per week), sow about 300 lettuce seeds a week for 7 months straight. The first and second year made many mistakes and got poor germination. Putting lettuce trays on heat mats did reduce greatly the germination rate. Putting the trays in a unheated hoop house also didn't work, it got too hot during the day. Now we just leave them outside. In spring gets down to 45F at night, maybe 55F during day. We use automatic overhead sprinklers, so the trays get over watered every day. Our seedling table must provide water for all the seedlings so must water enough for the largest plants. To prevent damping off, use a 1:1 perlite:peat mix (Black Gold seedling mix) with some sifted compost included 4:1 mix:compost. The overall mix is light and airy. A coir based mix didn't work, stayed too wet. Use only solid fertilizers, liquid ones get washed away with the overwatering. For the mix, I add in crabshell meal (Eliot Coleman recommendation), greensand, and soft phosphate. When I added in bloodmeal or fish meal to the mix I got damping off. To much available nitrogen. When the seedlings are about an inch tall, I sprinkle a mixture of bloodmeal and sifted compost over them. This gives them the needed nitrogen and once an inch high, I've never had any damping off. To save time I never tap the seeds into the mix. After filling the tray with mix, just drop/bang the tray against the table 4 times to get the mix to settle to a good firmness. Put the seeds on top and add a layer of fine vermiculite and overhead water. The fine vermiculite layer noticeably increased our germination rate on all seeds. Keeps the top moist and more importantly protects an emerged seedling from fungus. The vermiculite is sterile.

I've had bad seeds float too. I'll just leave them where they are and keep my eye on them and if they progress to the point where they grow a leaf the I'll just plant with the others. I find that the ones with a root that sink, seem to be coming out of the seed sort of twisted. But other than that I expect that they will be fine. I really don't know why some sink like that. I'll keep a small amount of the Sumatra seeds but at this point since it's not a cross I actually wanted I just can't grow everything on, I've already run out of space! They'll be good for others to experiment with....Donna This post was edited by dondeldux on Fri, Mar 15, 13 at 15:51

Hi dizzy. Almost all of them have four or more leaves per seedling, so I would guess that's what you mean by second set (this is the first time I tried to grow from seeds). I started mine in the house on a bright windowsill over the winter. They went outside in May and have been there ever since. When it starts to get too cold here in October most likely, I'm going to bring them in and put them back on the windowsill with my other mature amaryllis'. I don't have a light set up or room for one, but I'm sure they'll be fine. I think all the sun/rain/fertilizing they got this summer does wonders for them. They are growing very well. I don't think they should be too set back by being on the sill this winter. And just maybe I could see a scape next summer. I'm hoping!

You all should come over to garden.org and check out the swaps. You get to see/"bid" on (you take if you're the first to grab it) the seeds you really want, and it's a great computerized system! I've been able to get seeds for so many varieties at a great savings! :D The swaps are mostly winding up and run from Oct or Nov thru February-March, but check out the swap section, watch the "how to video" and get ready to swap for next season of seeds!