First, circling back to the original question about seedling starter kits, I've been using the Burpee Ultimate Seed Starter System for a couple of years, sold at burpee.com and also at Home Depot. It's kind of a piece of crap, in terms of construction quality and so forth, but it does do exactly what it's supposed to do - make it easy to get 144 cells of seedlings going and thriving (for me, that's 288 seedlings).
Second, lights: I do think this is critical. I first started seeds with T12s but then upgraded to a T5 rack. Here's what I started out with in my first year, the T12 setup:
the problem with T12s is simply that they don't put out enough light in a concentrated area, so, at least for me, the seedlings ended up leggy and thin. This year I upgraded to a T5 system purchased from Hydrofarm, with 8 T5 6500k's under one fixture. Two pics:
The seedlings came out much, MUCH stockier and healthier, and their ultimate productivity in the garden by the end of the season was dramatically higher - in many cases, double the number of pods.
Rather than encourage a particular solution (e.g. T5's) I'd just say that you should really get the strongest lights as directly on to the plants as you possibly can. The sun is a strong light, and that's what seedlings are designed to have over them. GL
Second, lights: I do think this is critical. I first started seeds with T12s but then upgraded to a T5 rack. Here's what I started out with in my first year, the T12 setup:
the problem with T12s is simply that they don't put out enough light in a concentrated area, so, at least for me, the seedlings ended up leggy and thin. This year I upgraded to a T5 system purchased from Hydrofarm, with 8 T5 6500k's under one fixture. Two pics:
The seedlings came out much, MUCH stockier and healthier, and their ultimate productivity in the garden by the end of the season was dramatically higher - in many cases, double the number of pods.
Rather than encourage a particular solution (e.g. T5's) I'd just say that you should really get the strongest lights as directly on to the plants as you possibly can. The sun is a strong light, and that's what seedlings are designed to have over them. GL
Hopefully the weather is better this year, because in Indiana last year it was awful for growing chiles. It went from complete cloud cover every day for a few weeks at the beginning of May (when I was attempting to harden off my plants), to a few weeks of monsoons, to a couple months of extreme heat and humidity and practically zero rain.