Starting the Seeds Indoors ...

I want to be able to start my tomatoes, peppers, pumpkin, cucumber and some of my lettuce indoors to get a head start on the growing season.

I'm considering buying a grow light from www.leevalley.com, but it costs $215 (maybe I can get it second-hand).

I'm also considering getting a kit to make a grow light from http://www.homegrownlights.com/14wled.html. This is much cheaper at $45 (US?) for about a square foot of grow space.

... I need to investigate this further and check up on energy usage -- I want to keep this efficient.

What to grow?

I've ordered my seeds this year from www.cottagegardener.com, which is an heirloom seedhouse in southern Ontario. They have tons of really interesting varieties of vegetables which are suitable for growing in this region. I've chosen:

• Beans: Tendergreen and Black Valentine
• Radishes: Plum Purple and White Icicle
• Beets: Bull's Blood, Chioggia, and Golden
• Pea: Mammoth Melting Sugar
• Pepper: Marconi Red Sweet
• Hot Pepper: Aurora
• Cucumber: Mideast Prolific, Straight Eight, National Pickling
• Tomatoes: Black Zebra, Bloody Butcher, Czech Select
• Pumpkin: Cheyenne Bush
  
• Lettuce: Gourmet Heirloom Leaf Mix, Heirloom Romaine Mix, Mesclun Mix

I'm not sure how/if this will all fit into our small growing area, but some of the seeds are for my brother and for the cottage, so shouldn't matter too much.

Starting line ...

We moved into this house 8 years ago. The plot originally had a plum tree, 2 pear trees, 2 apricot trees and a grape vine. Old age and backyard reorganization has us down to 1 plum tree, 1 pear tree and 1 apricot tree. Our neighbours have a VERY prolific mulberry tree that comes over our fence. We also have a rain barrel.

I started a herb garden several summers ago and I've been casually vegetable gardening for a couple of summers now, but this summer I'm getting serious. I want to see how much good quality, organic food I can grow in our tiny backyard and how much food in total I can gather including all the fruit.

I'm going to track how much money and time I spend, how much city water versus water from my rain barrel I use, and how much food I gather!