Sarah provided a terrific link there. Maybe I can add a little, having just started my petunias: the ambient (room) temperature is less important in germinating than the soil temperature. if you're using bottom heat you should be fine. that's what i do and i take the temperature of the medium with an instant-read thermometer. I put my little containersÂthe ones berries and mushrooms come in, plastic, with holes in the bottom (hot nail)Âon bottom heat and cover them with a piece of plexiglas, about 3 inches away from the fluorescent tubes; or, if the medium isn't as warm as you want it to be, you can put the containers even closer to the tubes, that will add some additional warmth. in my set-up the temperature stays at around 80°. Using pelleted seeds from Park, one variety came up in about 3 days; the others are taking longer. When they're up, I move them off the bottom heat to a cooler location, also under lights; they'll get stronger and stockier if you grow them cool. in their new location I have a small (about 5") computer fan that wafts a gentle breeze over all my seedlings, keeping the damping off problem at bay. by the way, you should be able to germinate tomatoes and peppers in exactly the same way. (peppers can take even higher temperatures, but it's not necessary.) not surprising, since petunias, peppers, tomatoes are all in the same (nightshade) family. but that temperature is too warm for other annuals, like snapdragons, and way too warm for most perennials. good luck and have fun! GaryStPaul

Now I know what to do with them :) How many plants do you think will fit? Depends on how big they get. My problem was that tomato seedlings that should have been outside a month ago we inside growing to 10" because of the unusual cold weather we were having...I've never keep them in this long and they were getting so big that I ran out of room with one 4' light, and Cathy was not happy with the setup in the middle of the room. Forgot to ask, what type of flowers are you looking for? I have no idea, I'm open to suggestions...I'll pick up a copy of the book for some pointers. Thanks! The Manalucie seeds you had asked me for just came in... Thanks Lou. Do you like okra? I do but Cathy's not wild about it so I stopped growing it. Look at my response in this post and tell me if you'd like some seed for dwarf okra plants. I start most flowers outside. Looks like that's mostly the case Amber, I was hoping to be able to enjoy some inside just watching them get started before moving them outside.... Very nice. What are the syringes for? Drawing put liquid nutrients to put in the water.... ...You have nicer lights though.... I was going to by the cheap T-8s but when I was how wide the spacing of the bulds were on these, and the silver reflectors above the bulbs I couldn't resist. They were not cheap though, $40 a pop! Tom

I don't understand the purpose of the drop cloths, and like Larry, I'm concerned about the fire risk. Raising seeds indoors will lose its appeal really fast if your light-shelf set-up burns down the house. Tomato seedlings should be grown on at cool temperatures after the seeds germinate. The ideal temperature for them is 65 degrees. Leaving seedlings on a seed germination mat is risky and can damage them. I have a seed germination mat and rarely use it. If I'd known how easily 95% of the plants I grow from seed would germinate indoors without a germination mat, I never would have bought one. Some years I don't even dig it out of storage and use it at all. When I do use it, I move the entire flat off the mat once 50% of the cells in the 72-cell flat have germinated seeds in them. About the only vegetable seed I'll use the germination heat mat for is pepper seeds, particularly older seeds I've had a few years. I often germinate my tomato, pepper and other seeds in zip-lock bags like George mentioned. As long as I remove them from the zip-lock bag before the plant stems and roots become intertwined with one another, they don't mind being moved from the bags to the flats of soil-less mix. I find it very efficient because I'll have full flats with each cell filled with seedlings, instead of having flats with some empty cells because the seeds in them failed to germinate. I prefer to grow seedlings on for a few weeks in conditions that are fairly cool. Because the guest room where I put my light shelf faces the south and has big windows, I struggle to keep the room from getting too hot for them. To keep it cool, I close off the HVAC vent in that room so that it isn't getting any heat when the heater is on. I let them have a couple of hours of early morning sun and then close the drapes so that the room doesn't heat up too much. I keep a fan running 224/7. When you raise seedlings indoors in a room that is too hot, they quickly grow into monster plants, and that's not good for them. When they grow large quickly, they outgrow the available space under the plant lights. When that happens, what are you going to do with them? I used to move mine to my screened-in back porch, but once we built the greenhouse, that became the place I put them when I kick them out of the nice warm house. They might get warmer in the greenhouse than I'd like during the day, but then they get very close to freezing temperatures in there most nights, so that keeps them from growing rampantly like they would indoors. It is so early to be starting tomato seeds indoors that I get a headache thinking about it. You only need to start them 6 to 8 weeks before your recommended transplanting date. The OSU-recommended planting dates for tomato transplants are April 10-30, with the April 10th date being intended for folks in far SE OK and the April 30th date being intended for folks in far NW OK. The rest of us have to chose an appropriate transplanting date somewhere between April 10 and April 30, based on where we live in the state and on our local soil temperatures and air temperatures. Sometimes, in a really hot winter with an early last freeze, we can put tomato plants in the ground up to a month early and get away with it, but years like that are few and far between---maybe once or twice a decade, and it just happened in 2012, so I don't know if we'll have another year like that any time soon. I usually start my tomato seeds on Super Bowl Sunday, and that can be far too early for me in years when the air and soil temperatures stay cold deep into spring. And, it can be almost too late in a year like 2012 because it means my seedlings will barely be big enough to be transplanted early. So, I feel like it is the exact right time to start them since it isn't precisely right for long, cold springs or short, warm winters. It is right in the middle. If I started tomato seeds as early as you have, my husband would lock me in the cellar until the insane urge to start seeds now had passed. That is because he knows all too well how crazy it makes me to have big, healthy plants indoors that cannot go into the ground for another month or two. Because our weather is so erratic, even when I start them on time, I sometimes cannot put them into the ground for another 2-6 weeks beyond the preferred transplanting date. The last time we had a year like that, it just above drove me crazy, and I just about drove him crazy. So, since you started your seeds so early.....welcome to the insanity! Dawn

My light set-up is similar to those that others here have described except my shelves are white plastic. I have two shop lights hanging above each shelf, and each fixture holds 2 fluorescent bulbs. They are on chains with hooks so we can raise them and lower them as needed. This is important because plants growing too far from the lights stretch and get leggy. Leggy plants are weaker and harder to harden off to outdoor conditions than shorter, stockier plants. We put hooks in the ceiling above the uppermost shelf so we could hang two fixtures above the top shelf and raise seedlings there too. My shelves easily hold three flats per shelf but with creative placement and squeezing flats in tightly, I can get 4 flats per shelf for a total of 20 flats of seedlings on the shelves at one time. It is really easy to over-think this and to spend way too much money on some fancy and expensive lights that you don't need. That just isn't necessary. Simple shop lights with the cheapest bulbs you can buy have worked just as well for me as more expensive bulbs designed specifically for growing plants indoors under lights. I used those more expensive Grow Lights on one shelf one year and its plants didn't grow as well as the ones growing under cheaper shop light bulbs. All my light fixtures are plugged into power strips so they are easy to turn on and off. You can use a timer to turn them on and off if your schedule is erratic. I used to start seedlings in standard black flats, but several years ago I switched over to aluminum roasting pans....like turkey pans or lasagna pans. Since they are shiny metal, they reflect more light and heat onto the plants. I buy them in packages of anywhere from 12 to 20 at Sam's or CostCo. There really isn't a right or wrong way to set up your seed-starting shelf as long as you have it in an area that doesn't freeze, that has good air flow and that is easily accessible so you can pop in and check on the plants and pop back out again. You just have to figure out what works for you in whatever space you have available. If you have indoor dogs or cats who might enjoy sleeping on your seedlings, eating them, tearing them to shreds, etc., keep that in mind when you chose a place to put your shelf. My cats are totally banned from the room with the light shelf because they like to eat plants, but our large dogs (a Rottweiler mix and a Lab mix) sleep in the room with the light shelf and have for several years and they don't bother the plants at all. Be careful when putting it in a garage. Even if you think there are not any mice in your garage, you might find out you have them the hard way....when you walk into the garage one day and discover your plants have been used as Mice Chow. This is a fairly common issue for folks who start plants in a garage or some other sort of out-of-the-way area where humans spend little time in general. Starting seeds indoors is so very simple despite the fact that we humans sometimes over-think things and make it harder (and fancier and pricier) than it has to be. Just keep it simple and I think you'll be delighted with your set-up and your home-grown seedlings. Dawn