If you are looking to germinate annuals and perennials, save your money....

Check out the following method which has been around (tried and true) for hundreds of years...

Here is a link that might be useful: Winter Sowing

Lary, I've never done the light set up thing so can't advise you. Have you checked out the Starting From Seed forum? I'm sure you could get some good advice over there.

Barbara

A simple idea: buy some trays to hold water, pots and seed starting mix (or just potting soil, perhaps mixed with perlite or vermiculite to loosen it). Plant seeds, and hang an ordinary fluorescent light over it, connected to a timer. It's what I've done for years and it works just fine.

Ditto on doing your own. You can get own small bags of vermiculite, perlite and spaghnum peat moss , cheaper than a made up system. I usually just use vermiculite and a little perlite mixed in or just vermiculite by itself works well. You can buy the trays with domes cheap too. I dont go for peat cells either, thats just me. I moisten my mix thruout not swampy, then put in cell and then follow the procedure on the seed starting sections on this site.