From seed starting to planting - help me in my plan

[tnkrer]

This is my first year to start from seed. So I am reading and trying to formulate a plan. Here are the major stages and how I plan to accomplish those (with questions peppered in) Please let me know where I should change/improve

0. Preparation: Find out what you want and acquire seeds - In the winter preceding the season, read up on TVille and find out what you would like to grow, what would work in your location, for your style of growing etc. Beg, borrow, barter, buy the seeds you need.

1. Sprouting: I am using small dixie cups (with lids) with a thin layer of DE (Diatomaceous Earth) saturated with water. The cups are in a plastic container which is on heating mat. variety of the seed is named on the dixie cup. The temperature inside the plastic container hovers between 75-80 F. In my trial I got tremendous sprouts on all 4 seeds I tried. Right now I have three seeds of each variety per dixie cup. (16 containers in all, tomatoes, eggplants and peppers)

2. Seedling: In 3 to 5 days the seeds will sprout. When the sprouts are still small (less than 1/4", I am worried that bigger sprouts might break off when I am moving those) move the sprouts to seed starting tray containing DE. The tray is over the seed heating mat. There is a plastic dome on the seedling tray. The temp inside that is around 75 F. DE is being watered from bottom. Add 1/4 tsp per gallon of all purpose fertilizer to the water when seedlings emerge. In another 3 days I will be ready to move my sprouts to this setup. This set up is ready to go.

3. Transplant: This is probably 1-3 weeks away and I am least prepared for it. So many questions and nothing is ready yet.
. Potting

After true leaves emerge, move each seedling to its own big pot.

• Exactly when should I transplant the seedling.
• What should be the size of the pot?
• Is this the final home of the plant before it gets planted out?
  

I plan to take 2 strongest seedlings from the three that sprouted and pot them (I am going to plant only one of each variety, keep one as backup. Third seedling is discarded.)

. Temperature

These pots will move to the garage where there is never sunlight and minimum temperature goes down to 35 right now. (unheated garage in New England), but may not go down that low in next few days. I have read that folks have been keeping plants in garage and it automatically provides cold treatment.

• When should I worry about them being too cold? (I will have a temp sensor near plants that will tell me the lowest temp they reached in the night.)

. Watering/Fertilizer

I plan to water after I see some stress. (I read on TVille that it creates stronger root system to deprive the plants of water just a little bit). Also keep feeding 1/4 tsp per gallon of fert.

. Grow Lights

I have 40" X 27" area in the garage. I can double that by cleaning up the mess and quadruple that by adding another level and cleaning up the mess.

• How many plants will that hold?

I plan to add lights hanging with a chain from the ceiling so I can adjust height and put those on timer so that I can turn those off for some time in night. I am following this thread in the hopes of getting thicker stems.

• What kind of lights should I use?
• How many sq ft per those lights?
• How long to keep lights on, any preferable time to shut off lights durint the 24 hours?
• There is no enclosure as such, so I don't see where I can paint it flat white .. Should I create walls on either side for the light to reflect better?
  

4. Hardening: I didn't really do this for nursery bought plants in last few years.

• When should I start hardening? when daytime temps are about 50 AND the There are two levels of branches?

This seems to be standard practice - Take out one hour first day, 2 hours second day .. so on until they stay out during daytime.

5. Plant Out: I will worry about this later.

Any other gotchas? Things to watch out for? I am reading about this damping off and I don't know what that is. Will this plan promote that problem?

Thanks for reading all this rambling and appreciate any help/thoughts you can provide. I am planning to buy stuff for my grow light setup tomorrow, so need to decide on the lights ASAP.