I do it because I get unusual plants/exotic colors only catalog seeds can give me. I do it because I like doing it. Yes, you can get earlier bloom with some plants. With others (like cosmos and zinnia) I find they do best planted directly outside. You learn from experience. Lately (after doing it for 30 years) it's become a bit of a chore so I stopped doing seeds that need to be started before March 1st and buy those plants in the nursery. I use an 8 tray light setup with two shop lights next to each other on each level, each light with one ordinary 40 watt tube and one full spectrum tube. Keep a list of when each plant needs to be started (by weeks before last frost), keep the lights no more than an inch from the plants, and always have a fan or slightly open window in the plant room to prevent fungus. Try to water from the bottom and without soaking the top of the soil. Have as much fun with this and go nuts obsessing over whatever you feel comfortable with. Rewmember, it's for pleasure!

Dan, most impatiens can be started 6-10 weeks before planting out. In your zone (if similiar to ours) it would be mid may to early june, which means that you would sow them mid to late march. Impatiens can grow pretty fast, and unless you can transplant into 3" square pots (4" round pots) then I recommend only starting them 6-8 weeks before planting out. (if your basement is significantly below 60 deg F night temperatures you may need longer time). Impatiens are not hard at all. The seeds can be quite small, but use the end of a moist tooth pick to gently transfer the seeds one by one to the pots. The seeds will stick to the moist wood and you can this way sow them one by one. Press them lightly in to the surface, but do not cover. Germination temperture is important. They require consistent 72-77 deg F in order to germinate. Lower than 72 deg F and you get vary irregular germination. above 78 deg F and the seeds enter a state called thermodormancy (basically it is too warm for the seeds to germinate). The best way I have found to control the temperatures, is to cover the flats/pots/packs, etc with clear plastic (or plastic domes if you have them) and then adjust the fluorescent lights above the flats so they are 4-6" above. This will help heat up the temperatures under the covers (test with a cooking themometer to find out how warm the soil gets). You can also use heat mats if you have them. Keep the lights on 24/7 until all seeds have germinated. This is required for uniform germination (also helps stabilize the temperatures) In general we expect 70-75% germination success with our impatiens. A special note on fertilizer: - impatiens are light feeders, so only fertilize them with a dilute mixture and do so every 2nd or 3rd watering. But do make sure you fertilize starting from young seedlings (1st true leaf stage) as otherwise flowering will be delayed. Fertilizing the plants starting when they are very young can have great impact on the flowering later. Keep the fertilizer levels light, however, as they are light feeders. About 3 weeks before you plan on setting them outdoors, pinch back the growing point. This will make for a bushier plant with more flowers (not so tall either). It takes about 4 weeks from pinching to flowering, so pinching back 3 weeks before planting out (last week april, or early may depending on your target dates) will help you get flowers sooner and compact plants. Good luck

You're welcome for the help. :) You're starting on a fun adventure, if you can just not lose faith. Try to look at the "non-successes" as just that, and not failures. Look at them as learning experiences and just keep going, trying again, not giving up. If you start small and don't count your chickens before they hatch (as tempting as that may be...), it'll be LOADS easier to do that. I'd try starting a few cuttings of everything you have, even if you don't have any rooting hormone, soilless mix or a greenhouse, and use it as a learning experience. Rooting things is really easier than one may think. All you really need is a cutting with atleast two nodes (one below the soil level for roots to sprout from and one above for leaves), some type of light soil/media to stick it in and water. Once rooted, it'll need more sun and some food of course, but just to get them rooted you don't need much. Things like rooting hormone, a heated greenhouse, bottom heat, extra-light soilless media to start them in (like peat, vermiculite or perlite), etc., do help speed things up a good bit and increase the percentage of cuttings that actually root (some people get as much as 95% or better using all the above), but you can start some things without all that. You just have to be more patient since it takes longer, and also be okay with maybe having only half of the cuttings actually root. Some plants are harder to root than others, so some you won't get any to root while others you may get 80% rooted. But if you have more time than money, that might be what you have to do to get started. If you don't have a greenhouse, set up a makeshift coldframe on the ground up against your house so you can start now (or as soon as it gets warmer than twenty degrees ~ BRRRRRR!) ~ something as simple as some stakes in the ground to hold some clear plastic up off the cuttings a bit would work (clear or "opaque" builder's or painter's plastic from Home Depot ~ just be sure to check it often for brittleness and replace it once it starts getting that way or it'll fall apart and you'll have thousands of little pieces all over your yard). You'd be getting ambient heat from the ground and your house. Just keep an eye on the temps inside it so you don't cook them (it can get over 100 degrees in there quicker than you think). Once sprouted, you could even put your seedlings in there. If it's hard for you to bend over that far, maybe you could put some old boards across some cinder blocks to raise them a bit. In your zone, it'd probably still stay warm enough inside without having to run a heater. Just remember that the taller it is, the cooler it will be since the heat from the ground and the house will have to heat a larger area. "I also do have cranberry hibiscus that produce seed, are easy to grow, and are edible. Another good choice maybe. I really like the pepper plant idea too, but do they have a long life span?" Hibiscus are always popular, so I'd say yes, they'd be good. Pretty and/or edible is usually always good. Peppers are tender perennials (will live as long as they aren't subjected to a killing freeze). Most people grow them as annuals in the veggie garden, letting them die when frost hits, but some ornamental peppers are kept in pots for years like houseplants. "Please tell me more about being a seed starter? Would I basically sell seedlings?" If you want to. It's up to you. You can sell them as three inch tall plants in 2" pots or six-packs, or you could grow them to fully mature plants. It all just depends on how long you want to keep them. I'd start out selling as soon as I had plants that I could honestly and sincerely say, "I'd pay two bucks for that." Or whatever price you plan to put on it. Be critical. Go check out what the competition's selling and make sure yours look as good or better (preferably better) for the price. For the cuttings, I'd atleast grow them until they have rooted well enough to have put on a lot of new foliage. I wouldn't ever try to sell a cutting that doesn't have but a few new leaves ~ that's too soon to be relatively sure it won't die soon after transplant. Your buyers are only buying from you because either they don't know how to propagate the plant themselves or, most likely, they don't want to have to baby the plants themselves. They want to be able to take it home, plop it into the ground or a pot outside and have it grow. So make sure yours are big enough to handle that. The ones that don't sell, I'd pot up in larger pots as they grow and put a higher price on them. At the end of this year, you'll likely have a few plants like that. That'd be nice since you can offer a wider selection to your customers. Over time you'll find out what plants sell better in larger sizes, and can plan accordingly for the next year ~ start them earlier to have them that size at the beginning of the year. Start collecting larger pots now so you'll be ready for that. You can ask at nurseries (keep in mind some, like WalMart, have to give them back to the grower, or atleast hold on to them until they can be counted/verified by the grower), landscapers and landscaped places like golf courses. Maybe even your local freecycle. Ask gardening clubs, too. To avoid bringing home pests and diseases, keep the pots separate from your growing area and dunk them in some clorox water before you use them (I use a big trashcan and put the entire stack of pots in it, letting them sit and soak for a while to make sure the clorox gets in between each pot). Other things you can collect now are any type of irrigation supplies. Hoses, hoses, hoses. Sprinklers are good as well. It's nice to have those professional misting/watering systems, but if you don't have the money, a regular yard sprinkler set up on a couple of cinder blocks set in the middle of your grow area will do the job okay for now. If you notice the plants getting beat up too much or getting funguses, you may have to resort to hand watering, but even that's not too bad ~ I use the time to plan out what I'll do the next day. Hit construction sites and ask them for any castoff lumber to build propagation beds with. Nail them into bottomless "boxes" on the ground (like raised beds), fill with compost and/or potting soil, and stick some cuttings in those for rooting (once rooted, just transplant them out into bigger pots) ~ in winter, just put some stakes at the corners or pipe hoops across them, cover with plastic, and keep going. If you get lucky and find lots of lumber and some old windows, you can even get fancy and build some cold frames like this one, or use plastic or plastic corrugated roofing sheets to make them like this one, or these. Start collecting mother plants as well ~ any plant you find easy to propagate. Build a nice flowerbed and fill it with plants to grow to take cuttings from later ~ two of each in case you lose one. If you start from cuttings now, you'll have a nice cutting source in a few years. If you can't put them in the ground, keep them in pots ~ plastic food grade barrels cut in half and holes drilled in the bottom work well, last forever and are cheap ($10 or $15 apiece ~ keep watching the classifieds in your local paper, and Craigslist). Like I keep saying, just start small and be patient. Don't give up, and five years down the road you may be sitting in your backyard looking at half a dozen propagation beds, a dozen cold frames, a couple thousand pots lined up in rows and a little greenhouse ~ all filled with growing plants. Nice thought, isn't it? :)

Thank you for the info Remy! I will do some homework then and figure out who I'd like to order from. I did have great success one year in the garden with what I think was an heirloom variety called German Queen? I wasn't able to find plant stock of it this year and I don't know if it would be suitable to growing in a greenhouse. But I've been given some suggestions on suitable heirlooms for the greenhouse so I'll experiment with some in addition to the hybrids. Thanks for the tip about Garden Watch Dog too, I wasn't aware of this. Sincerely, Danielle