This is my second year starting seedlings indoors and I changed my setup a lot. Last year I basically just put trays on heat mats on a table and let nature go. I had a lot of problems with legginess and slow growth but my garden did okay eventually. This year I want to do much better so I built a little setup for sprouting and seedlings. I’m pretty pleased so far, things seem to be coming up fast and have a much better color than last year, but I’m not sure what legginess looks like in seedlings this young (3-4 days). Do they need more light or do they look happy? I’m Zone 7b if it matters.
(BTW the room is not as dark as it looks in the pic, something about the bright grow light seems to wash out the room light. All these pictures were in standard indoor light.)
by ExtraplanetJanet
2 Comments
The only seedlings I see in there that you really want to start in trays are the tomatoes, and I think I see a pepper in a humidity dome. All the rest I see, watermelon, cucumber, squash, pumpkins, peas and beans, you really should start in the ground from seed. They do not like being transplanted from trays to ground, and will oftentimes stunt their growth to where they would be behind a ground planted seed, or even just die. There are times when you want to do something like this with those vegetables, but that’s just because you have a really short growing window, and you start it in a very large container so you don’t mess with the roots when/if you transplant it.
Once the seeds sprout, you don’t want the humidity domes on. Take them off, and also get them off the heat mats(looks like you did this). The tomatoes look leggy to me. And at least one of those varieties of squash are “praying”, meaning they’re reaching for light. So I’d say you probably want to lower the lights down a few inches and see how the plants handle it.
You can also add a small fan in the room to create some airflow. Just enough to move the plants a little bit. This will help them from getting leggy as well.
I don’t have an answer for you because my seedlings got leggy but what’s this light on the top? I got a round one for free that looks very similar and I’m trying track down a similar brand.