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:
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.