From what I understand you are wintersowing if you are sowing seeds while it's still winter! ;) Your set up sounds a lot like the concept behind a cold frame. You can wintersow with cold frames too, as a matter of fact on Trudi's website she talks about how she planted an entire kiddie pool - that's basically the same concept of a cold frame or raised bed, she just used a pool instead of what we'd normally think of for those functions. The only major difference is with a traditional cold frame you are shooting for a few weeks before your regular planting out/sowing date, while with wintersowing the concept is being able to put your seeds out in the earliest days of winter. I think the containers are more of a convenience, they are easy to move around and control the conditions inside. But I'm sure you will be able to make your raised bed work. This year will just be a learning experience for what you like and what you don't, what works for you and what doesn't. Once I have sprouts I don't really worry about them much more than I did before I had sprouts. Just keep them moist as you did with the seeds. As the weather warms up consistently I increase air circulation by either opening vent holes or if we get one of those very warm odd days where it's 65 one day and then 40 the next I might even open the lids for that day so they don't overcook (remembering it's warmer in your little conatiners than it is outside). Other than that I don't really mess with them. If you've sown reseeders or perennials your sprouts should be able to tolerate cold dips in temperature. We are just mimicking what mother nature does naturally...reseeders and perennials would drop to the ground and experience all the fluxuations of winter, only to sprout and grow in the spring. We just speed it up a little by putting them in containers to create slightly warmer conditions to get them to sprout earlier. I wait until Feb/March for Hardy annuals and won't start my tenders until mid April...once those sprout I will blanket them if it goes below 35, but those day are far fewer that late in the spring in my area, so I only anticipate doing that a small handful of times.

Mary, These are totally different than what you started indoors in the past. These seedlings are strong little buggers which don't need to be coddled. Got plans for them in the gardens? Go ahead and transplant. They will appear to just sit there for a little while, but then they will take off. While they are 'sitting there' they will just be getting used to their surroundings in the soil. If your intention was to plant them in larger containers before placing them in the gardens, then you can do that too. I do both all depending on the plant. All annuals go straight into the gardens and some perennials. One reason I might hold back and pot up some perennials is to see their blooming colour before placing them out. Since a lot of seeds I get are from cross-pollinated gardens, I might get a lot of a colour I already have, but then one or two of the colours I don't and so I give away the 'repeats' and plant all the colours I was looking for in my gardens. Have fun filling your gardens!

Estelle - None of them are blooming yet - I'm just excited to see actual seedlings! The cosmos will probably be the first to actually bloom, I think. Well, a few of my new perennials are blooming, but just a little bit. My Nepeta and achillea have each had a few blooms so far. I do find it amusing that the flowers on my nepeta are rather similar to the creeping Charlie I've been trying to rip out!

Tomato seeds can stay viable for 20+ years. 2 years is nothing. I would still expect close to 100% viability from 2 year old seeds. That said, seeds can carry pathogens that cause damping off. I had never had problems with tomato seedlings damping off, but this year, I've had a % of seedlings from ONLY one variety from one particular source damp off. Nothing else has damped off. So... blaming seeds for damping off isn't ridiculous. BUT given the other symptoms (leggy, not thriving, etc.), I would suspect that, as others have said, you need to re-examine your setup. You may just have gotten lucky in past years. Sometimes, you can have a setup that is leaving you wide open for trouble but luck out for a few years in a row.