[daniel1212]

Does anybody have a guess as to why my tomato seedlings that I have started in small pots or other containers always seem to start off ok, shoot up a 2-4 inches but are very “spindly”, then fall over and die....Never can I seem to get to healthy, slightly bushy plants 5-6” tall, like one sees in the “4 packs” or “6 packs” one can find @ Lowes and so on.

Sounds like you have a real soil problem. What are you using for potting soil? How much sun are the plants getting? Any problems with your water? How many worms do you see in your garden soil? Since you are near Lowes (and if they actually have it, as they do not online), I would recommend Black Kow 1-cu ft Organic Compost and Manure (50lbs $5:26) or Hapi-Gro Timberline 40-lb Organic Compost and Manure (1.88) and Peat Humus40-lb $2.28) And if you have acidic soil Espoma Garden 6.75-lb Organic Lime PH Balancer ($4.98)

Test and Improve Your Soil

10 Easy Soil Tests That Pinpoint Your Garden's Problems

3 Simple DIY Soil Tests

Hope this helps. PeaceByJesus .

[metmom]

It’s light.

When the tomato seeds first sprout, if they don’t have enough light, they grow very quickly and become tall and spindly, and are very light green in color.

To prevent that you need a grow light and I put a small fan on the plants to simulate winds and the harsher conditions of being outside.

[Paul R.]

Thanks for the reply! Again, purchased plants do great in the garden itself. There are lots of worms in the garden and compost. It is seedlings started in small pots or those 4 or 6 packs, reused from plants' purchases after they have been emptied, that don't make it. I've tried so many varieties of purchased potting soil and top soil that I can't even tell you which I used last year. Most of which soils I've also used when planting store bought plants (to help refill the hole - works fine / those plants generally do well.) Plus I've tried soil from what we compost. The latter (part of the compost area itself) grows volunteer tomato plants* just great(!) if undisturbed and not added to / dumped on with more material to be composted that would bury the young plants.

*Apparently a few stray seeds from food prep / slicing & dicing tomatoes or tomatoes that go bad get in the compost.

That said, thanks, I may pick up a bag of the Hapi-Gro Timberline 40-lb Organic Compost and Manure (1.88) and / or Peat Humus40-lb $2.28) that you recommend. We are low on such material. The lighting for the seedlings is mostly artificial (grow bulbs - no good unshaded windows to grow stuff) but I've also tried starting the plants outside - granted that was in early summer after the indoor attempts failed, and those may have received too much heat and light early on. (We are in the Mid-South, Zone 7, and the seedlings would have been about 5- 10 days old right at summer solstice, both times, IIRC.) So that might have been a different problem.

Water, well (pun) it's good tasting well water, a bit "hard" but not bad, I drink a lot of it untreated, and I haven't toppled over yet. I guess I could test ITS ph or just switch to collected rainwater. (There is plenty of that available in the spring, here!)

I'm guessing maybe when watering for being away 2-4 days the plants are TOO wet too long. Or maybe it is the light, or, some sort of pathogen* (despite the new soil) that plants 1-2 weeks old in small reused containers are vulnerable to. It is NOT too much plant for the container -- store purchased plants are probably 20-100 times more plant mass for the container than the seedlings, at the point the seedlings keel over.

*I also suppose it is just barely possible there is enough juglone in the well water to damage seedlings at their most vulnerable(?) stage(?) -- we have tons of hickory trees in the area (but not near the garden.) We use the same water for the garden though - no apparent problem, but then that's on older plants. This time of year or a little later, there's no need to water the volunteers - they get plenty of rain.