I have several types of heirloom tomato seeds as well as some peas,
onions, spinach, etc. I haven't done too well with store bought plants
in the past, I think because the soil is pretty clayish. There's a lot
of sun but not completely sunny because of overhanging trees.

I used a tray (around 3' by 1') from a local store that uses some kind
of peat moss disks with an indentation to insert a seed. A total of 55
seeds went in. It's moist and now I wait for the seeds to germinate.

The first question is what kind of lighting to get. From what I read,
full spectrum fluorescent tubes are probably the best, I guess a four
foot fixture? T12 or one of the newer formats?

I'll need some way to control the height of the fixture but I can rig
up something. There are some prefab systems at the local store but
they start around $150 which seems way too much for something so
basic.

There's also reflector types of bulbs like this:

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1...atalogId=10053

but I can't see those providing the coverage that the fluorescent can.


Finally, I'm planning on using some former lawn areas for more growing
range, and I think I'll need to hit the whole area with a lot of peat
moss. I will probably also try to use the weed block stuff (black
material).

Any comments welcome.