I guess it is quite a bit of work. However, it would not seem nearly as labor intensive, if I was successful. I LOVE gardening. I also have an outside garden using raised beds. However, I prefer the clean environment growing inside provides. I cant stand having to fight off blights, pests, PM, and the other outdoor garden maladies. Most of these problems came to the fore after consecutive days of heavy rain, or high humidity. I prefer having the ability to control the indoor environment. It felt fantastic having garden fresh cherry tomatoes for salads from January through March this past winter. I had great success with Sungold cherry tomatoes last summer. I absolutely loved the taste of Sungolds, and so did my parents, I would love to be able to surprise them with a decent amount of them this fall. However, I was not able to acquire Sungold seeds in time for the raised beds this summer. I have tried starting my seeds under HID light, HO T5, and standard fluorescent lights. That's why I am starting to question the cleanliness of the air quality in my growing areas. My starts stunt almost immediately upon emergence. They stunt whether close to light or far from light, fertilizer or no fertilizer. The problem looks the same every time. I have seen other threads and pictures on the internet with people having the same looking problem as mine. The consensus seems to be a P deficiency. It cannot be P though, I have used Bloom fertilizers upon emergence to try to give them adequate P. I have provided a humidity dome and heat mat to avoid cooling that could possibly have been occurring. I have made sure the water has been at least somewhat warm when irrigating. I am likely going to start some seeds near a sunny window in my home to see if it just the localized air quality of my growing environment.

Thanks for the advice. Some clarifications: I have always used soil-less media which is supposed to be sterile. I was considering microwaving it at one point. The damping off I am referring to is that the small seedlings get going, get about 2 inches high, and then the base where they contact the soil goes a brown color and the seedling dies. I never had this trouble for the first 3 years of gardening at all, but the last 2 I have had it wipe out my seedlings each time. The reason I moved the seedlings outside was to get them airflow. I just moved my entire tray out there during the day and brought back in at night. But this didn't help. I have put a tray underneath and am going to do the bottom watering. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to try the H2O2 method as well. thanks and keep the suggestions coming. Wayne

If you are interested. Please scroll to bottom to see those no longer available. John Here is a link that might be useful: seed offering

The common cause of damp-off is OVER-watering. Overly wet soil that is kept consistently too wet is ideal for damp off to develop. Keeping soil lightly moist until germination is fine but once germination happens you need to cut back on the watering. And I think you'll find most will agree that watering most any crop even daily, much less 2x a day, is over-watering. ;-) The goal is deep watering (longer period of time) and much less frequently. Depending on where you live and your climate you may easily find that 1x per week is sufficient. Dave