starting tomato plants inside

[tmoney54615]

Ihave been trying for the last couple years starting my tomatoes inside. Problem I have been having is they seem to come up really well, but they get to heavy and seem to fall over after a couple of weeks. Any suggestions to keep them standing upright when they are 2 to 4 inches tall?

[rainbowgardener]

MarlinG was talking about seedlings not getting enough light, getting leggy. That is they stretch up to try to find light. The stems are more slender and there is a lot of stem length between the leaves. It is not a good thing. My tomatoes got ahead of me this year and I tried moving them in front of a window. They got very tall and leggy and then in the hardening off process with a lot of moving in and out etc, a number of them just snapped, because the stems weren't strong enough.

But this would NOT be what you are talking about if your plants are no more than 4 inches tall. Are they spindly and tend to just flop over on the soil? Then what happens, do they keep on growing?

You could be getting damping off, it's a fungal condition of seedlings growing with too much moisture and humidity and not enough air circulation.

[TZ -OH6]

They need strong light and bending stress to strenghten them. You can run your hands over them to bend the stems a couple of times a day or put a light fan on them for a bit of time each day.

[tmoney54615]

Marling, sounds like it might be the damping off, they do seem to keep growing but stems just not strong. i will try watering them less and getting air circulation to them.
Thanks