Turning Over a New Leaf

[slowkid]

Bad puns aside, after last year's vegetable garden fiasco, I am making a real effort to educate myself on the art of vegetable growing. I may have gotten a tad ambitious, but I am starting a number of veggies and tomatoes from seed and building four raised beds. It is going well, but some plants (ie broccoli and basil) germinated in two days! My question is this: when should I put them under the florescent lights? The shoots are still wicked small and the instructions that I've read are a little ambiguous as to when you introduce light. Any help would be appreciated.

[rainbowgardener]

As soon as the leaves (meaning the cotyledons or seed leaves, the first ones that come) are out of the ground, they want light and lots of it. Fluorescent lights just a few inches above the plant, on at least 12 hrs a day (mine are on 16 hrs).