To start, you need AT LEAST 30 watts of fluorescent lighting over your 29 gallon tank, preferably 40-60 watts for a low-light tank, using bulbs specifically made for aquatic plant growth. You can get these at a good local fish store. Technically you could use regular fluorescent bulbs to grow a plant, but aquatic plant bulbs are a safer bet, and more likely to help your plants.
The bulb type should be anywhere from 6,500 to 10,000 "K" (it will say so right on the box). This is the light colour output that plants like. 6,500K is a yellower-looking light, 10,000K is whiter looking. It's your choice, really, depending on how you want your tank to look.
I'm assuming your fluorescent light is inside a tank hood. In order to upgrade the lighting, you can buy a special "retrofit" kit to install into your hood that has hardware for higher wattage bulbs. That's one option.
Another option is to lose the hood and get a glass top for your tank (they're quite cheap), & buy a strip light fixture that lies on top of the glass and shines down onto the plants. You can buy single lights, or dual lights, at various wattages. Again, a good aquarium shop should carry these. Some people use shop light fixtures from a hardware store, but these are reputedly not as efficient for getting the light into the tank (and not as "pretty" as the ones designed for aquariums).
Once you obtain the right lighting, gravel is fine for growing most of the low-light plants because Java fern, java moss, and anubias can simply be tied to a rock, piece of driftwood or decoration. They get their nutrients from the water, not the soil, so a little liquid fertilizer once in a while will help. Cryptocoryne plant (the roots only) can be buried in the gravel (mine does fine this way), but I believe Amazon sword plants and a few others do better with special soil/substrates such as Eco-Complete or laterite, not just gravel.
You can get into special techniques such as injection of CO2, etc. but for a low-light tank it isn't necessary. If you choose to have more light (say 90 watts of light over your 29g), you may have to get into adding CO2.
That's pretty much it.
