If you dont want to use pete why dont you look into some of the expandable pellets - I think they make some out of coir now.

Rather than buy the expandable pellets *shudder*, money would be better spent on buying a commercial seed starting mix. I've also had success with regular ol' potting mixes and adding a diluted shot of fertilizer once they get going. If saving money is the goal, then mixing your own makes sense, but only if you get it right the first time. I'd spend the 5 bucks and get something that works the first time.

this is what use.

�2 parts screened compost
�4 parts sphagnum peat
�1 part perlite
�1 part vermiculite
�Lime as needed to adjust pH to 6

Seed mix -

�50�75% sphagnum peat
�25�50% vermiculite
�5 lbs of ground or superfine dolomitic lime per cubic yard of mix
�Blood meal, rock phosphate, and greensand at 5 to 10 lbs per cubic yard

Organic seedling mix
you can scale this down to what you want.

�10 gallon of 2 year old leaf mold, sifted
�10 gallons of sifted compost
�5�10 gallons of sphagnum peat
�5 gallons of perlite
�5 gallons of coarse river sand
�3 cups blood meal
�6 cups bone meal

Wow thanks a bunch for some great recommendation and recipies. I grow a lot of heirloom tomato starts for friends and neighbours and I sell them to those folks for a little less than the local nursery sells better boys types. That way my gardening can pay for itself, they get cheaper tomatoes, and heirlooms. So I am looking to reduce costs some. I figure that I can cut the cost of the seed starter in half by mixing my own. So keep any recommenations coming. I am particularly interested in mixes that don't use pete if there are any.

I have a different perspective. Using a sterile commercial germination mix gives me reliable good results. Well worth what I consider to be a minor extra expense and a major convenience.

You don't say what went wrong with your seedlings, although you suggest that you had to keep growing them inside longer than you planned. I have found that tomatoes do better if they are no more than about 6-8 weeks old and no more than about 12 inches tall when I move them outdoors. Other things could have caused your problems, like light level, soil compaction, low fertilizer or disease from the compost.

"I have found that tomatoes do better if they are no more than about 6-8 weeks old and no more than about 12 inches tall when I move them outdoors."

Yes this was my plan last year. Our average last frost date is around may 6. I planned the planting to be exactly 6 weeks from that date. As averages go, we went over last year by about 3-4 weeks. I do have a green house and the plants were out there for a lot of that time. So that was part of it, but not all. After I had spotted some of the disease issues I started some more seeds with a similar mix (except compost was not added) and those had health problems. Some of the treys had compost others did not. Some of the recieved a dilute fertilizer once, but others did not. I actually think it was a ph problem, too much peat and no lime to balance it out.

Not impressed with the peat pods. This is the first year I have used the "jiffy" peat pods. I am less than impressed with them, as they hold too much water, for too long, and feel they contain too much peat. I will not be using them next year.

If some plants received dilute fertilizer once and others none at all, that was the problem, not pH. You have to feed them during 6-8 weeks inside, to say nothing of going over that time.

I had problems with a homemade mix earlier this year. I was given this recipe from a successful organic farmer:
10 gallons perlite
10 gallons peat moss
1.5 gallons vermiculite
8 tablespoons of dolimotic ground lime to counteract acidity of peat moss
1/2-1 cup of Bio-tone starter plus(optional)

http://www.extension.org/pages/20982/organic-potting-mix-basics

Bio-tone starter plus, I looked it up. Looks like it is a mycorrhizae. Good recommendation! Mycorrhizae can make a big difference in a plants nutrient and water uptake. Also it can make tomato plants resistant to fusarium wilt more than non-mycorrhizae. Thanks for the recipie!

Kevinitis, I have 45 different tomato varieties, about 150 plants, almost all heirloom, that I have just started from seed. I am going to pot them up into 3.5" square pots this week. I am using a commercial potting mix that nurseries carry here in Northern California called Gardner & Bloome Blue Ribbon Blend Premium Potting Soil. I have used Sunland GroLine Premium Growers Mix in the past with excellent results. The wells are filled to ~1 inch from the top by sprinkling the soil in and shaking to level. NO packing! I put 3 seeds per well and cover with ~0.25 inch of the potting soil gently sprinkled over the seeds. The cells are gently watered 3 times with 15 minutes or so between waterings. I use a hose with a mist sprayer. The goal is to thoroughly wet the potting soil without compacting it. The tray is then covered with Saran wrap to maintain moisture. They sprout best at ~75 degrees F. Since I do this in my rather cool garage, I put the tray on a Seedling Heat Mat. I am very careful to check the temp with a digital thermometer as you do NOT want soil temps above 85 or below 60. So, you may have to put a thin towel or 2 between your pad & tray to get your best temp. Of course, if you can do this in your house in a room at 70 degrees or so, you can ignore the heat pad stuff. Check twice a day for sprouts. The second you see one remove the Saran wrap & start placing the tray outside in the Sun during the day. If you are doing it all inside, make sure you get a fan blowing on the new plants while they are under the grow light. Continue to water the plants daily. When you get several sets of leaves, transfer them to a 3.5" or 4" pot taking care to plant them deeper than they are growing after sprouting.

You can find a LOT of great tomato tips at the Love Apple Farm website.

Here is a link that might be useful: Love Apple Farm on Tomatoes

DWD2, thank you for posting your methodology. It always good to see how others grow their seeds and compare methods. I have grown my own starts (36+ tomato varieties) for the past 5 years. Before last year, I had not had too many plant health problems, except for the first year when my light system was not close enough to my plants. In that year I had problems with leggyness. I strongly suspect that my problem last year was the seed starter mix, but it could have been a few other things. I may have introduced disease into the first batch by incorporating compost into the mix. I think this is unlikely because in other batches and other treys I did not use compost in the mix but still had the same problems. Also, once the plants were in the ground they recovered and grew well the rest of the summer. If it were a disease I would have expected that the plants would still have had problems after planting, which they did not. Tomatoes are really amazing in what they can take early on and still produce well. For example, I had a mouse eat all the leaves of two plants shortley after they were in the ground. There were only stems left and I thought they were done, but I did not pull them out. Both plants sprouted new leaves again and became bushy healthy plants.

I was astounded. I have had others suggest that with an approximately 50/50 mix of vermiculite and peat, I may have had water retention problems that suffocated the roots. Thats possible, but I was pretty careful about my watering. I can't totally rule that out. It may also have been too many nutrients from a dilute solution of fertilizer at watering as the problems occured shortly after that. I have read that new seedlings don't need many nutrients becuase they get what they need from the seeds/cotyledons. Some have even suggested that you will cause more problems by fertilizing than just not fertilizing. The reason why I fertilized is because we had a number of storms in May that pushed my planting date back 3-4 weeks longer than our average frost date. So I fertilized a little. I may also have had root binding problems. There is another possiblity which DWD2 suggested. I used a seed heating matt for the first time last year and most of the tomatoes had it under them for at least a day. So I may have over-heated the soil a little and damaged the roots. However on the last seed trey that got started late, I did not use the heat matt because I suspected it may have caused the problems. Yet I still had the same problems in the last trey. My strongest suspicion is still the starter mix.

I have read the ingredient list on several seed starting mixes. In most cases, they usually contain peat (as the main medium plus it has high cation exchange capacity) + vermiculite (for micro nutrient exchange and water retention) + lime (to balance the PH of the peat). They sometimes include perilite, but sometimes not (example Jiffy), they also sometimes include a few other things (mycorrhizae for example or a source of nutrients). The main ingredient that I was missing that most starter mixes have is lime for ph balance. I could not find lime in any stores in Utah at the time. They do sell it here, but it is not a common soil amendment in Utah because most Utah soils are slightly alkaline (PH 7.8-8.2). So most folks would not want to add lime. This year I am interested to try mixing my own starter again but I wanted actual recipies to get an idea of the right proportions to use. Also I had no idea that mycorrhizae was available so I am defintley going to use that in my mix. Alternatively I could just buy a pre-made starter mix, but I wanted to save money and its a learning experience as well.