On Mar 29, 8:57*pm, Eggs Zachtly wrote:
dgk said:

I have several types of heirloom tomato seeds

Hope you started these a few weeks ago.

as well as some peas,

You can direct-sow peas.

onions,

From seed???

spinach,

You can direct-sow these, also.

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.

For most veggies, you'll need full sun (at least 6 hours per day).



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?

Flourescent lighting is probably the worst. But, it's probably the cheapest. If
that's what you use, make sure to keep the lights close, and I mean close, to
the plants. Raising the lights as they grow.



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...h_d2/ProductDi...

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

No experience with those, sorry. Tho, I'm sure the results would probably be
about the same as a flourescent light.



I've started seeds indoors and had good results indoors using just a
southern facing window location that gets plenty of light.