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!

I have alot of seeds to plant, some sitting in the fridge since 2005. I tried the rocks method with about 15 ketchup cups, the rest I soaked in the hydrogen peroide solution right in their plastic baggies, have been changing the water every 3 days. I am amazed at the numbers that are germinating. Some radicles/nubs started showing within 24 hours! Many look like they are plumping up [the older ones]. I am starting to plant now, and will do lots of planting this weekend. I have never tried the peroxide method before, just always soaked them in warm water and a bit of ivory liquid and always got some to germinate. The shoebox method would probably be easier, but it seems that presoaking would help germination, and it sure seems to be working. Do you poke holes in the shoebox/sweater box or just keep the soil damp and top mist it? If no holes are poked, it would seem the soil could sour and the seeds rot....would enjoy hearing more about this. Would also enjoy seeing photos of any seedlings growing and grow methods. Judith

Ballplayer, Sure looks like you keep trying. I'm not sure what the problem is but I can tell you how I do mine. I usually start 500-600 seeds a year, FWIW. First, I get one of those plastic to-go trays with a lid from a restaurant. Drill small holes in the bottom of it. I like Ferti-lome Ultimate Potting Mix though every once in a while, I find a small piece of bark or a twig that needs to be remove. I add about 1.5" of this, then use a tweezers to place each seed individually, just barely in the mix. Cover that with a thin layer of potting mix, maybe 1/4". Set the entire thing in a tub of either rain water or aerated (for 24 hours or more) tap water. Let it sit until the mix is sopping wet. Remove it, put the lid on the tray and either place it on a heat mat set to 85 degrees or during summer, just on a bench. I do not water it again, at least not for a week or more. Usually within 3-5 days, the first seeds germinate. As soon as they do, I put them under CFL bulbs, as close as I can after removing the lid. When the mix is almost dry, I set the container back in the tub but usually add a very small amount or Tomato-tone fertilizer. This is lower in nitrogen but high in other ferts plants need to develop good roots. Put it back under the lights, then repeat as necessary. Once the seedlings develop at least one good set of leaves but usually two, I prepare nursery trays. Fill with potting mix, set in that tub of water and compact the mix, then refill and compact again. Let it sit, usually for an hour or more - however long it takes to throughly soak the mix. Remove it from the tub, set it aside for the evening. By the next day, excess moisture has drained off. Using my finger, I poke a hole in the mix. I gently remove the seedling (it helps to have that mix damp, but not wet) and place it in the hole until just the leaves are showing, then tamp the mix around it. When I finish a tray (6-36 plants) I put it under lights, again as close as I can. Then, I let the plants grow, watering them only when the mix gets dry (usually the plants will start to wilt a bit). Once the plants get 8-10" tall, I transplant them into 5-7 gallon pots. That's for my dirt plants. Next is the hydro ones. HTH, Mike

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