Slow, But Steady Seedlings

I'm mildly concerned that my veggie seedlings aren't doing so great this year. Due to all the cold weather, I've had to confine most of the warm-weather crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc) to the basement for most of the spring. My basement maintains at around 60 degrees and my fluorescent lights aren't super bright. While these conditions are fine for a time, my seedlings really need some bright natural sunlight and warm weather to bulk up before planting time.

These tomato seedlings are enormous, but that's because I got them from a greenhouse at work. I feel like this is cheating, but who can pass up free heirloom tomatoes?

My homegrown tomato seedlings, on the other hand, are much much smaller (most only have one or two sets of true leaves at this point. Some of my other tomato seedlings (I'm too embarrassed to show them) are even smaller due to an unfortunate watering mishap that happened during my conference in Iowa (in short, some of my tomatoes got a tad bit dry, which was exacerbated by the heating mat, and I lost probably 30-50% of my tomato seedlings. Oops! That said, I think I'm almost back on track now. The youngest set of seedlings (the ones I can't show you) have two more weeks to shape up before planting time.

My first foray into favas seems to be going well. All but one seed germinated, which had some weird maggot disease upon investigation.

The basil I started a week or so ago is looking good too, although I don't know if it will be ready by farmer's market time.

This year's jarrahdale pumpkins are doing well too.

In fact, all of my squashy crops seem to be doing well...with the exception of some of the gourds, which refuse to germinate. I've been growing ornamental gourds for several years now and the germination rates are always very variable (I'm talking over a month apart for the same cultivar, from the same seed packet, grown under the same conditions).