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sisterrific

Why are seedlings so small? Can I plant outside anyway?

sisterrific
13 years ago

hi, I've been lurking for a while and recently joined the forums! we are in the Foothills, about an hour from Sacramento, but not too high, so very similar climate.

This is our second year gardening and second year starting plants (peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, etc) from seed. Last year seedlings were great! This years are not great at all! I have two questions: Can I plant them outside anyway? and What did we do wrong?!

Can we plant them outside anyway?

Seedlings will be 8 weeks old on Sunday. Tomatoes are about 6 inches high, everything else is smaller. They have fewer leaves than I would have expected too. Someone who shall go unnamed thought the 3rd day of hardening off meant they could be outside from morning till night so a couple of them are burned to a little crisp. If we give them a slow week of hardening off should we be able to plant them outside next weekend and they'll do ok?

second question...

What did we do wrong?!

This year... not so much. They are 8 weeks old and still very small! We started them in sterile seed starting mix with heat mats and grow lights. after 2 sets of real leaves we transplanted them to a mix of seed starting mix (what they had already) and good quality topsoil (which is growing our outside veggies very well). They were fertilized with our worm compost (but not very often) and we took the heat mats away. Last year I can't recall how we fertilized them, but we kept them in a room with a space heater so they were about 72 degrees the whole time. This year they were in a window in the dining room so they probably had more like 68 during daytime, 60 at night? Also worth noting that the tomatillos, despite being only 6 inches or so, have flowers already. does that mean they are all stressed out?

Could the problem be:

- they were too cold to grow properly? (the cold-liking kale looks great, so I think this might be the problem?)

- transplanted to too small of containers? (some are 4 square inches, many are smaller, but even 4 square inch pot plants are not nearly as big as last year)

- not enough fertilization? (maybe our worm compost isn't as awesome as we think it is, or we used it wrong)

- bad to do the seed starting mix when transplanting?

- we overused the fan to make them sturdy and instead just stressed them out?

- not enough light? we had grow lights on for probably 12-16 hours/day though! (the plant/aquarium ones from GE which were supposed to be pretty good?)

Would appreciate any and all advice. Have tons of gardening books but can't find an answer as to why our seedlings are so little this year! thank you so much!

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