Every year I plant something indoors close (about 10" below) under a florescent lightbulb in my kitchen so if you are only sowing a few pots, this will work. Last year I grew a hibiscus from seed and it germinated and grew well all winter there. I use seed starting mix like you can buy at Walmart or Home Depot. Seems if it would work for a hibiscus, it would work for some tomato plants.

I have a large south sunny window that I also use for starting certain plants that need warmth and light, it is very successful and it a fun thing that helps to get me through winter. For other seeds needing cold stratification or cool temps, I use the winter sowing method that you can refer to here on the Winter Sowing Forum. Some of them sow tomato seeds that way. I cannot understand why some of them winter sow tomatoes at all, I would never even consider that so I only mention it in case there are other types of appropriate seeds you might want to try as well since light is an issue for you.

If the plants outgrow the pots, you do will need to pot them up in larger pots but I usually don't have that problem using 4" pots and I just set them out in spring. You can get an all purpose potting soil for this.

I put baggies over the pots to keep them warm and moist until the seeds sprout, then remove it. Soaking seed for a few hours before sowing in half water and half hydrogen peroxide will help prevent damping off. Some seeds I soak, others I don't. Damping off is one of the problems for indoor sowing however.

I'm not saying this to discourage you from raising them from seed, but just so you will know....you can buy Cherokee Purple transplants in stores. I see them at Lowe's, Home Depot and Wal-Mart, as well as at smaller, local ma-and-pa type nurseries, every year. So, if you think you have to raise CP from seed in order to grow them...well, you don't. However, I prefer to raise tomato plants from seed rather than buying them at stores. I think I get healthier, happier, stronger plants that produce better for me when I grow my own. Mostly that is because I am able to start the seeds at exactly the right time in order to have them the size I want for the approximate planting date I have in mind.

I've grown CP and the closely-related Indian Stripe from seed for over a decade and you have to be careful about your seed source. Some of the seed available commercially just isn't the "real" CP. Jay was the first person here on this forum to mention this years ago, so I started paying attention to the seeds I was using, and sure enough, I found I agreed with him. I changed the seed supplier I was using, and found to my delight that the seeds I purchased reminded me of the "old" CP I grew in the early to mid-2000s much more than the plants I'd grown from seeds purchased from other companies in recent years. The seed supplier whose seed produced the real CP for me is Gleckler Seedmen, and I'll link them below. I'm not saying all other CP seed will give you a lesser plant with smaller, less flavorful fruit, but that is what I found in several instances with seeds purchased from several other sources.

For a starting mix, you can use any sterile soil-less seed-starting medium. I've used several kinds and find that any variety purchased off the shelf has worked for me. You can spend a lot or a little on a growing medium, and I don't necessarily think that the more expensive mixes give you any better result than the less expensive ones do when you are starting annuals from seed. I usually just buy the Jiffy sterile soil-less seed starting mix because that is what is on the store shelves when I am ready to plant.

You can use whatever size container works for you. Starting small and potting up works, but you also can start with a larger container. It is just easier to manage smaller containers if you are starting lots of plants from seed. I usually start everything in 72-cell flats, planting multiple seeds per cell, and then pot up to individual containers once the seedlings have a couple of true leaves. When I pot up, I usually put two seedlings in each small pot (I use paper cups if I pot up while the plants are really small or larger plastic Solo cups if I am behind and don't get around to potting up until the plants are larger). As long as you have holes poked into the bottoms of the cups for drainage, any of them will work.

Plain old shop lights work just fine. I've raised thousands of seedlings under them with no problem whatsoever. Just remember that no matter what sort of lights you use, the seedlings have to be hardened off to outdoor conditions gradually. I start with one hour the first day, two hours the second day, three hours the third day, etc. Remember that plants raised indoors are not used to direct sunlight or direct wind, so suddenly exposing them to a full day of sunlight and spring wind often will kill them that very first day. Proper hardening off is a vital part of the process you cannot ignore.

A lot of us make our own seed-starting shelves by suspending a shop light from chains on a shelving unit. My first one was just three plastic shelves and it cost less than $10.00. Each shelf was lit by one shop light that had two bulbs. My current unit has 5 shelves and each shelf is lit by two shop light fixtures, each one containing two fluorescent tubes. It is easy to start small your first year and, then, if you find you enjoy raising plants from seed, you always can invest more money in a larger shelving system and more lights as the years go on. I went pretty slowly from using the 3 shelf unit for a couple of years to a 4-shelf unit for a couple of years and then to the current 5-shelf unit. Actually, my first couple of years of raising plants from seed indoors, I just raised them on an east-facing window sill because that was the only place we had direct sun. The house we lived in then was on a mostly shady lot, so I had to work with what I had. The plants got a little leggy, but not unbearably so.

The seed company I'm linking below has seed that is true to type. The Cherokee Purple seeds I purchased from them produced plants that produced fruit that was larger and true to type and taste. I had become increasingly frustrated with growing CP from seed because the seed from many suppliers is producing smaller fruit that was not/is not the same CP I first grew in the early to mid-2000s, so I have been very happy to have found seed that produces the Cherokee Purple that I remember. It sounds nitpicky, but if I am going to grow and eat CP, I want it to be the best CP available and the one that is the most true to what CP is supposed to be.

Victory Seed is another company whose seed usually is true to type, and so is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I've gotten really picky about who I buy tomato seed from because I'm seeing a lot of heirloom tomato seeds producing fruit that is not the fruit it is supposed to be, and that is very frustrating. I think too much seed is being produced without the proper protection and some seed is cross-pollinating and giving us plants that under-perform.

I used to start seedlings in very small containers and progressively move them up every couple of weeks to bigger containers. One year I just decided to skip that step and went from the 72-cell flats to 20-oz. plastic cups and it worked just fine, so I no longer bother progressively potting up to bigger containers. I get ripe tomatoes about the same time every year regardless of how many times the seedlings were (or weren't) potted up while growing indoors.

The important thing is just to not start your plants too early. If you start them too early and they grow well, you likely will have to pot them up to larger pots to avoid having them become rootbound. If you start your tomato seeds 6-8 weeks before your anticipated transplanting date, your plants will be just the right size at planting time and you shouldn't have to worry about potting them up more than once. If you grow peppers, by the way, you can start them at the same time you start tomato seeds, but you need to hold them indoors a couple more weeks because they do not tolerate spring''s cooler soil temperatures and air temperatures as well as tomato plants do. I like to put 7 or 8 week old tomato plants into the ground, but will hold my peppers in pots (and this may mean I have to pot them up twice to bigger paper or plastic cups or pots) until the night-time temperatures are sufficiently warm. So, often, my pepper plants might be 10-12 weeks old when they go into the ground. That sounds too old, but from plants put into the ground in early May, we're usually harvesting jalapenos before the end of June. I like to have the first big harvest of paste tomatoes and peppers ready together in June, along with onions, so I can make and can oodles and oodles of salsa from late June through late July. Some years it all works out that way, and other years the tomatoes are ready before jalapenos and onions are.

I think you'll really enjoy starting plants from seed. I noticed how much thought you put into building your raised beds and how well they turned out, so I know that you can do this. The big secret about raising plants from seed is that it is pretty easy. Annuals, in particular are a cinch, and once you understand the stratification needs of biennials and perennials, they aren't as hard as you'd think. Once you start raising your own seedlings, you'll have so much fun you won't want to stop. The first couple of years after we moved here is where my seed-starting activity suddenly exploded and got out of control because I finally had enough full-sun areas to plant as much as I wanted. So I did! As soon as I moved one flat of plants outside and had an empty space on the light shelf, I started more seeds. I kept doing it until the weather really was too hot for me to be transplanting young plants into the ground. It amazes me how many flowers, veggies and herbs I can cram into my raised beds, and growing plants from seeds makes it possible to grow lots of interesting plants that you rarely see in stores.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: CP at Gleckler Seedmen

Awesome, thanks Dawn. I was planning on Southern Seed Exchange based on previous reviews. I like that they provide plants that are tailored for our heat/precipitation. I figure that's good if I want to experiment with some unknown-to-me varieties. I will definitely check your link out though.

If I buy the equipment, I plan on trying to start everything I can from seed. Is there anything particular that really just isn't worth starting from seed?

This post was edited by Dulahey on Tue, Jan 7, 14 at 0:34

I bought some 72 cell plant trays to germinate seeds in, and plan on buying some 4" plastic square cups to transplant things into.

I also bought some bags of Miracle Gro Seed Starting Mix. That will go into the 72 cells, but what kind of mix should I use in the 4" pots?

Also Dawn, are all the seeds from Southern Seed Exchange good for Oklahoma? How can you tell if they aren't? I always assumed they were from Texas or something, not the Carolinas. Is the climate similar enough to call them all good?

This post was edited by Dulahey on Sat, Jan 11, 14 at 20:37

Seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange grow just fine here. I have bought dozens and dozens of varieties of seeds from them over the last decade or longer, and everything I've ever purchased from them has grown perfectly well.

Most warm-season plant varieties will grow well here, with the exception being that the tomato plants that produce tomatoes weighting 2, 3, 4 pounds or more don't like our heat, and stop producing viable flowers as soon as it gets hot here. With cool-season varieties, it is trickier. You just have to know what each sort of veggie, herb or flower needs in terms of cool-season temperatures. Broccoli, for example, does really well here in spring except when spring is exceptionally hot exceptionally early or when late winter and early spring temperatures fluctuate wildly. Cauliflower and brussels sprouts, on the other hand, need cooler temperatures for a much longer period of time than we can give them here in spring, so they perform better if planted in summer for a fall harvest than if planted in late winter for a late spring harvest. So, if you need to know about a specific veggie, herb or flower, feel free to ask.

The seeds sold by SESE are specifically adapted to the southeast---like the weather you'd have in Virginia, so they are for the most part very well-adapted to our sort of weather too. I love SESE and the day that their catalog arrives is one of my favorite days of the year. Their offerings don't change much from one year to another because they focus on offering consistent performers from their trial gardens---not on offering the latest new variety that no one will remember two years from now. I like knowing that I am purchasing varieties that thrive, year after year, in weather similar to ours.

Willhite Seed, based in Poolville, TX, is another company that offers only varieties that perform well in this region.They also ship fast, although they had some trouble during the peak period a couple of years ago. I wouldn't hold that against them though---so did every other seed company in the country. The recession hit and everyone decided to plant a garden and all the seed companies literally had more business than they could handle.

For a soil-less mix, lots of people use Pro-Mix, but I don't because it is not readily available in my part of the state. As long as you avoid the organic version of Miracle Grow, you should do just fine with something like Miracle Grow soil-less mix. I prefer using the Moisture Control version because it keeps the roots moist longer on windy spring days. Virtually any soil-less mix will work, but if you buy one that does not have a pelletized slow-release fertilizer of some sort in it, be sure you feed the seedlings every couple of weeks with a water-soluable fertilizer so that they grow well and are healthy when it is time to put them in the ground. The issue with the organic version of Miracle Grow a few years ago (it might have been their first year with that version) was that it was largely composed of chicken litter that I think wasn't properly composted and chunks of bark that could not be described as pine bark fines. Between the ammonia in the mix (which smelled awful) and the chunks of wood, people lost seedlings right and left. I rarely advise against using an organic version of anything, but make an exception in this specific case.