Too late to start new tomatoes?

[Aya]

Hey Guys

My current tomatoes don't seem to be growing all that fast, and they look a little spindly and small.

I currently have:

2 Red lightning plants (tiny seedlings)
2 Tomatillos (1 is sprouting from the soil - no sign of life from the other one yet...)

And 2 cherry tomatoes - with no signs of sprouting/germination at all.

They've all been planted for about 2 weeks now, and have been under plant lights for 16-18 hours a day. Should I be worried? Is it too late to try and plant more?

[Dixana]

Tomatoes generally want heat and dark to germinate. The light might be part of the problem. Move them to the light after they have sprouted.

[rainbowgardener]

Well, I haven't had any trouble germinating tomatoes under lights. Since I start the tomatoes later than a lot of other things, the lights are on when the tomatoes are planted. The seeds are under the soil, so it is dark where they are. But the heat definitely makes a difference. No not too late to try again. If you get the conditions right, they will pop up in just a few days and take off pretty rapidly once it is warm out.

[TZ -OH6]

Please describe your plant lights, soil set up, and temperatures.

[Aya]

I'm keeping my seedlings in the garage under 75 watt plant flood lights. The soil I have them in is just a basic organic seed starting soil

[TZ -OH6]

Approx what temperature is the garage?

[Aya]

Well it isn't heated, so its pretty chilly in there. I think our days have been averaging 35-45 at night, and since they are in there all the time I'd say its probably just a few degrees warmer than that.
I read that it was good to keep my seedlings in a colder environment as it would help them to "grow hard" and then they wouldn't have such a hard time adjusting to the outside..

[cynthia_h]

Seedlings are not the same as ungerminated seeds. Very young seedlings need all the warmth they can get; later, they can be "hardened off" before living outdoors full-time. We have lots of discussions here about "hardening off" plants, so use this specific phrase and Search the Forum for many specifics about the process.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[TZ -OH6]

Tomatoes like to be started warm (room temp), and most of us keep them that way until they are ready to go out, but if you want to go high tech to boost flowering you can give them a cold treatment (50-55F), which starts shortly after you see the true leaves emerge and continues for two weeks. This also corresponds to the time for potting up, which you could either do at the beginning of cold treatment of at the end.

https://www.kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/start.html


I suspect that the cold treatment also slows growth during that time.