lisa2004 - I am zone 5 in Massachusetts. In my basement, I start mostly annuals and tomatoes and don't start my seeds under lights until 1st or 2nd week of April if you can believe it! I put my plant seedlings out in the garden Memorial Day or the week after depending on how cold the ground is. So I only keep the new seedlings inside for 6 or 8 weeks. If you start too early inside there are many drawbacks such as there is a chance that plants will be leggy, grow too large for your containers, you have to pay higher electric costs and monitor the plants for water longer etc. If you are starting perennials you could start earlier as they take longer to get going. I have been starting plants in my basement for 14 years now and used to start much earlier and have learned from experience later is better... Until then I get my labels ready which I print on my computer and organize my lists. I map out how many plants I need based on what happened the previous year etc. So there is somethings to do while waiting to get planting but I know what you mean about wanting to do something garden related. In the meantime, I try to go to some of the garden shows in the area or go to a gardening related lecture or class.

I'm in MN too. And it is probably not too early for you. I am always chomping at the bit to get going right after Christmas. I have learned though that depending on what I am starting, it is possible to start too early :) For perennials and some annuals that take a long time (i.e. geraniums, petunias) I've started them in January. For shorter season things like veggies, I usually try to wait until later in Febuary at least. I started my tomato seeds in January one year and they were almost 4 feet tall before I could get them planted out. They did wonderfully, but they were a little unruly to deal with in the house/greenhouse. One thing to keep in mind is to remember how much light space you have. You don't want to be using all your lighted space for germination trays. Then when you go to repot the seedlings into their own pots you will run out of lighted space for them (speaking from experience here! :)

Hey, I'm in Cedar Rapids too! I would suggest direct sowing your squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. I transplanted some last year that I started and really, the direct sowed ones caught up with the transplants in no time - not worth the trouble of starting them indoors. I've no experience with melons so I can't help you there. Tomatos - I'd say mid-late March and you'll be okay - lanky plants really don't do that well. Broccoli can go out a bit earlier, I believe, so you could probably start that right now but I'm no expert as I've never grown it from seed. When in doubt, follow the directions on the seed packet! This my second year gardening here in IA and I can't wait! Good thing I'm having my third baby late-March/early April - gives me time to get into a routine before the gardening season really is in earnest!

Scott, Can you move them to a cooler location? The warmer their location, the faster they grow. You can slow them down by keeping them cool and also by not fertilizing. If you deliberately withhold fertilizer until they are in the ground, they won't get as big as quickly either. As far as not fitting under the shop lights, can you put some of them in a sunny window? A sheltered, partly shady spot where they can get sun part of the day and shade the rest of the day? It is hard to slow them down once they get going, but it is not impossible if you can manipulate their conditions a little. Of course, commercial growers use a growth regulator to keep them short, but we home gardeners don't have that option (and I probably wouldn't use it even if I had it). Are your shop lights adjustable? I can raise and lower mine so that they are as low as 2" from each shelf and as high as about 12" above the shelves. When I start my seeds, I keep the lights so close they are almost touching the soil....and the plants as they sprout. Once the plants are growing, I can slow down the plant growth by keeping the lights down low and close to the plant. For example, if the plants are 3" tall, then the lights are only about 1/2" above the plants. That keeps the plants shorter longer. If I raise the lights to where they are 2" above the plants, the plants almost immediately zoom up that two inches to be closer to the lights. Thus, by keeping the lights almost touching the plants, I keep the plants shorter longer. Because it is rapidly approaching the time when I can plant them into the ground here in southern OK, I am now carrying them outside for about 6 hours a day and they are almost giddy with the excitement of receiving that many hours of real sunlight every day. At this point they are about to outgrow the light shelf anyway, so pretty soon I will just start leaving them on the screened-in porch at night. They may get a little chilly at night, and that will slow them down a little, but that's OK at this stage. Our soil is only in the upper 50s and our nights are still close to freezing most nights, so I can't plant them out unless I use Wall-O-Waters, but it won't be long now..... And, we have all kinds of tomato plants in our Lowe's, Home Depot and Wal-Mart. All are fairly healthy, but I never think that commercially-raised plants look as healthy as those grown at home. Their color always seems kind of "off" and sometimes they already have foliar disease issues even though they are not very old or very large, and have been grown in controlled conditions. Sometimes the earliest plants in the stores don't look as good as those that arrive later too. I always grow way too many tomato transplants, but I love the luxury of having back-up plants in case my garden gets hit by a surprise storm....sleet, snow, hail, etc. I usually end up giving away a lot of the extra plants, but I always hang on to some backups until very late in the season. Some of the backup tomato plants will eventually go into the ground in oddball places where I let them grow away to their heart's content. They will be in semi-shaded out-of-the-way areas where they produce a decent amount of foliage but not fruit. I use them as 'trap plants' for the tomato hornworms. When I find a hornworm in the veggie garden, I transfer it to the trap plants where it can eat and grow to its heart's content. That way, I get to enjoy the sphinx moths later in the season without losing valuable tomato-producing plants to the voracious appetite of the hornworm caterpillars. Melissia, Nothing helps you select a garden spot more quickly than having plants just begging to be planted in the ground! It is great that everyone's transplants are breezing along. Now if only the weather would stabilize at the warmer end of the scale so we could get busy planting! Dawn