I bought the heat mats, I bought the light, I bought the trays, the seeds, and the seedling soil. I used a dome. I scooped out the mold that grew thanks to said dome. I managed to keep the toddler and cats away from the sunny window where the trays live. I spent all of my rare, precious free time googling how to succeed and scrolling through reddit watching all the other seedlings flourish. Now, I have some sad stringy greens and a few fruit flies.
Where did I go wrong? Why are those tomatillos so sad looking? Do I start again or just spend more money on starter plants? When will my husband notice the fruit flies and evict these sad sad seedlings to the garage?
And how did tomatoes ever survive in the wild without all the heat mats, precisely placed lamps, and magic you guys seem to sprinkle on so nicely?
by goose8319
12 Comments
What are you doing for light? These seedlings are leggy from insufficient light. If you’re growing indoors, you need a light source suspended 2 or 3 inches above the foliage.
They grew in nature and came up at the appropriate time to grow and many never made it. These are cultured and you need to be nature to get them to grow. I have 600 watt LED dimmable lights and 252 watt led tubes and 150 what LED lights and they are on 16 hours a day. I grow several hundred plants with little problem. My plants get about 4000-5000 LUX and the window is about 240 LUX at my house, I believe. The sun is about 40,000 LUX or more. My window and sun numbers may be off, but the window isn’t a great light source for the hour or so a day the sun will shine in. And the sun is MIGHTY!! If you are only needing a few plants, it is easier to buy them. I buy herbs for example. I only need one or two of each and not worth the effort to grow from seed.
Either not enough light or the heat mat is too warm. Warmth can cause bolting which makes the seedlings appear stringy.
Did you get your grow lights on Amazon?
Awe!! They grew big fast! Sometimes they can get too much of the good stuff while reaching out. They are less hands on than many people like to think. I rotate my trays and give my seed babies “excersize” when I plant them inside as they naturally strengthen while follow sunshine. I’m not sure about salvaging them, you could try burrying the long stem areas, ultimately it’s up to you.
Not every plants likes heated and humid soil. I learned the hard way. Those things only speed up germinations. Might wanna repot and grow without dome and heat mat. Look into transplant shocks as well.
Repot in larger pots and bury them so only 1/2 inch is above ground. Maybe you can save some.
So for tomatoes and tomatillos if you leave the dome on and the heat mat after they sprouted they will get super leggy just from humidity or heat. You only use that stuff till they sprout and take it off immediately after a couple sprouted. If the light you are using doesn’t give off at least 150 PPFD that will also cause them to be leggy too.
It sounds like you did a lot correctly! However I do wonder if A)they were planted at the correct depths? Improper depths can create this legginess and/or B) if they received any wind natural or unnatural? There’s this technique we use in our commercial greenhouse that uses fans to “harden” seedlings off. It essentially makes the stems slow their growth and thicken up so they don’t get too leggy before transplant.
Based on a lot of these responses I’m thinking that I should have turned the heating mats off by now. I was wondering if I should, but as a handful of my seeds had yet to germinate while others were taking off, I wasn’t sure what to do with the inconsistent germ speeds. I’ll turn off the mats and look into separating them out this weekend.
And yes, I’m using lights purchased from Amazon – are there better (but still affordable) options out there?
Thanks for all the responses!
In the words of ZZ Top “she’s got legs”.
You did better than me! I didn’t get a single tomatillo sprout