Before they germinate you can put them on a shady windowsill or pretty much anywhere between 50 and 95 degrees. Probably better not to put them outside yet to avoid disease and bugs. Keep the soil evenly moist, but you don't need a greenhouse or plastic covering.

Once they germinate you will need to get them into the light quickly. You can get a grow lamp for inside your house or put them oustide with maybe a net or some screen covering to protect them from the bugs and diseases. Don't start them out in the full sun and don't cover them with plastic or glass if they are outside.

Someone will need to take care of them when you are on vacation.

Tomatoes have good germination rates so only plant two or three seeds for every plant you actually want to grow. When I first started seeds I threw the whole package in because I was sure that only a few would germinate...I was wrong.

I hope the others will add more to what I have said. It is easy to start tomatoes from seed, but everyone has a different method to grow stronger better seedlings. Trial and error.

Hi Julia

I hope that you are not nervous any more with Amber explanation about starting the seeds. And I agree that there are many ways to start the seeds, we just have to work with what is better for us.

You can start them inside like Amber suggest it or outside like I do. I just don't have any room inside the house with all the seed saving and vegetables curing.:) I also have to start more seedlings this week for friends and neighbors.

My open porch faces south, I have the cups inside a plastic container so they don't fly with the winds. I start them 1-2 seeds per 3 oz cup, the ones that germinate I transfer after 4 leaves to a 8 oz cup, after that they go in a pot about 18 inches wide and 15 inches deep.

When you go on vacation make sure you tell your parents to help with the seedlings, in a hot day they can dry out quickly.

My seedlings today.

Silvia

Julia,

These are my little Tomato seedlings, 3 seeds to each pot, each pot a different variety. My tomatoes starts are about 1 week behind Silvia's. If you use a tub like Silvia does to hold the cups your parents can take the tub with them to care for them while you are gone. Great Idea Silvia!

Lou

Thanks everyone. Amber, my front garden doesn't get much sun due to a huge oak tree so once they germinate I can probably put them there or on my front porch. Would that be a good idea? And I will probably use Silva's advice and put them into a big container like she does, so I've got some old screens from windows I can just lay on top. That should work. And my parents will have to babysit my baby plants just like they are babysitting my puppy! Any other advice or hints would be appreciated. I'm going to do this today! I am now excited

I did my seeds yesterday! I'm excited

Julia,

Just to give you another perspective on seed starting / seedling growing. I use 4 foot fluorescent lights with one cold and one warm bulb per fixture. I have them on a timer and the light is on for 16 hours a day. Once the seeds germinate and are ready to transplant they are moved to small 4 oz cups and a piece of yarn is pushed into the bottom of the cup and the yarn is left to dangle in water that has a bit of fertilizer in it. The seedlings water them selves and take up as much water as they need. The advantages are that the plants can be left for days, a week with no supervision at all. The plants never get too wet or too dry (just make sure your starting mix has perlite in it). All you have to do is add more fertilizer water every couple of weeks and keep moving the lights up as the plants grow. You want the plants a inch or two from the bulbs but even if the plants grow up and touch the bulbs while you are away it does no harm as they are cold.

IMHO It is the easiest way to produce big healthy transplants that are blocky and have big tough stems. The picture is my setup from last falls starts. For the spring planting it is much larger with 4 light fixtures in use. For the picture I moved the lights up away from the plants

Bamboo,

That's a great idea to use yarn as a water wick, I have used that method in the past with some of my larger potted plants using clothesline rope as a wick (back when you could buy cloth rope) but I never thought of using a yarn wick with my seed starts.

Lou

I like to start them under lights too, that way you can keep the lights right down on them for the first two weeks to keep them from getting leggy...then I pot up from the 3oz solo cups to 16oz cups and they go outside on the east (shady) side of the house for the next four weeks. I have a small garden so the 2' grow light works well for me. In this picture the light is raised just to take the picture, the bulbs are kept only 2-3" above the plants and I usually keep them on for about 12 hours a day until they go outside.

Tom

I think the tomatoes benefit from multiple repots so they go through 4 here. They start in a communal starting tray, then to individual small 4oz cups then 8oz then 16 oz and finally a deep 8-10 inch rectangular container that is 4 times as deep as it is high. At each repotting the tomato seedling is buried up to the top 2 sets of leaves. For me it seems to make excellent and strong seedlings. Like Tom I keep the lights almost touching the seedlings but I keep mine inside until it is time to harden them off. Unlike most when I take the plants out to harden off they never come back inside I just move them from sun to shade. Most say hardening off takes two weeks but my toms are hardened in 3 days, the peppers take longer, as a rule at least a week. I do smack the seedlings around when they are under the lights and that helps to toughen them up.....no I am not kidding lol. Peppers I just repot from the starting tray to the 4oz cups then to the 8oz cups.

Wish I could remember that University link that Cindee posted a few years back that discussed the number of pot-ups for optimal production of tomatoes. They actually pulled the plants and showed the roots...two pot-ups were optimal, any more just damaged the roots and was excessive labor without any additional benefit in the way of production....

Why would the roots be damaged in a repot? When the toms come out of the 4oz cups the soil stays intact on the roots. You drop the yarn through the new pots drainage hole and fill the new pot. If they are damaging the roots that could explain their goofy results.

Some people tend to believe everything they read or are told but others tend to observe and work out best procedures for themselves.