So today it has been a week since I planted my tomato seeds. Of course there are some that have come up but I am impatient for the rest to hurry up and make an appearance. I really am finding it exciting to be growing my tomatoes from seed this year.

Onewish1 said:From what I have seen.. red and blue are good for seedlings

depends on the plant. A lot of plants will get more benefit from the blue end of lights wavelength during their vegetative growth stage, but flowering will increase with more of a shift to the red side. Blue for vegetative growth, red for flowering. (Metal halide lights push more blue, high pressure sodium more red, for example)

Another thing to keep in mind with indoor lighting is to keep the lights as close to the plant tops as possible without any burning occurring. This is because VERY little of the usable light reaches or does much for the shaded leaves under the top sets and having the lights higher only causes more of the available wattage to be lost. Using reflectors or surrounding your grow area with a reflective material such as mylar will help redirect lost light towards the plants. Keeping the lights close will also help to prevent overly leggy plants, which is often an indicator that they are seeking light.

I have a really strange light. It is flat at the bottom and has little light cells. Most are red but some are blue. I know these weird looking (weird looking to me) lights work as I used it on my test seedling cell last fall to grow tomato plants from seed.

Whoa...sounds complicated.....will keep on using my west window!

RobinD said:Whoa...sounds complicated.....will keep on using my west window!

Believe me my set up is anything but complicated. I only use a clamp on fixture but wanted some sort of plant growing light bulb. I saw this on Amazon and read the customer reviews which are very good. So I bought it.

I have basil seeds here also to start. I tried basil in the summer and found out it grows really slowly. So thinking I have better start mine now.

I save those veggie cell packs so I went and scrounged some up on the garage and brought them in to the sink and washed and disinfected. When they dry I will fill them up with starting mix and will be planting my basil.

I have a strain of Italian Sweet Basil supposed to be the best straight from Seeds of Italy. I also have Italian Pesto Basil from Renee's seeds. If that is not enough I have common Genovese large leaf basil packet by Harts seeds.

Basil is slow but I will usually through the whole pack in a container. . After Easter .. and let it go

I plant basil in May, but I also buy a pack....that way I always have some in the garden.....

I do the same thing. Last year I didn't plant it near the tomatoes and something was busy eating it so this year it will go in another area.

I planted lots of basil. The strain from Seeds of Italy is such fine seeds I could barely see them. The seeds from Renee's Garden and Hart's Seeds were bigger but I surely would not call them big.

However if I get good germination (and I don't see why not) I should have lots of basil.

Love basil.....I had a problem with something eating it last summer also...insects? Anyway, I plant to plant the basil in 2 different locations, so maybe I'll have some even if gets chomped in one area....

Same exact thing here.

Humm, never noticed any bugs on my basil.

I had holes in the leaves so I attribute that to slugs/snails since earwigs tend to eat the outer edges and don't make holes.

Dual slug/snail/earwig damage:

Hate the slugs. I have lots of them as my garden is so heavily mulched. I do put out the Sluggo or else they would get too totally out of hand.

Same here along with shady areas that remain too damp.

It is all gone today. No snow and I hope it stays that way. When the weather turns warm as it is supposed to this week I can spend time in my garden and put up the rest of the tomato cages and garden stakes.

I refused to believe the 34 degrees on the weather station, went out to prune out dead hydrangea stems...and froze! One hour was more than enough!

pirl said:I refused to believe the 34 degrees on the weather station, went out to prune out dead hydrangea stems...and froze! One hour was more than enough!

It was not nice on my exercise walk with my dog. I just kept thinking of the warm weather we are being promised for mid week. I really would like to work in the garden in balmy weather.

I put away my tools in record time! We're all longing for a nice warm spring even though winter wasn't horrid at all.