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?

[Marlingardener]

Are you using grow lights? If plants don't have a light source immediately above them (4 to 6") they reach for the nearest light source, probably a window, and get leggy and lean over. Of course, leggy tomato plants can be buried in the ground up to their primary (first set) of leaves, and develop roots all along their stems.

[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