“Of all the seeds I planted last week, only one little tycoon tomato plant has risen,”
Give them some more time. Is water being soaked up into the bottom/lower sides of the cups or whatever you have the seed in?
I have them in the little 5 oz dixie dups with holes poked in the bottom of the cups. They are in little plastic trays with about an inch of water, but the water doesn't seem to wick up to the top 3/8 or so of soil in the cups. Maybe I should've "packed" the soil in there more.
Or maybe the seeds are toying with me as I keep going to look at them three or four times a day. Maybe I need to yell at them to "wake up".
This is pre-planting on the tobacco seed. I take a sharply creased piece of paper and pour some seeds into it. Then I use the knife to only get a few (3 or 20) seeds into each container.
Here is my 2012 seed tobacco that I started on the 20th. Since I took the picture I have thinned them.
Important on tobacco to have only ONE plant in each container.
/johnny