You have to go over in detail everything that affects the plants. Otherwise we are just guessing. It might be your water. Tell me about your water. It might be your fertilizer. tell me about your fertilizer and your soil. I use rain water. very soft and clean. should be no salt in rain water. I use almost no fertilizer at all. Extremely small amount of organic fish fert that is way watered down and amost never add any fert. never use dry powder ferts as they are salts and can poison the plants. I use high quality sterile soil with no fertilizer. as little peat moss as possible. peat moss can kill plants as it gets too wet. You want your soil as dry as possible so there is maximum air in the soil. You might want to add a fan to keep air moving. Plants want and need fresh dry air. outdoors the wind is constantly moving the air. It would always help to say where you live. Environment indoors is different in a wet area then in the desert. What kind of light are you using. too close to a hot light can burn leaves. Are you growing in a high humidity moldy basement or up in a super dry cold attic. What is the temp of the room. peppers need warmth. Are they getting fresh air from outdoors or is the room sealed up tight. How many plants in the room. If you want an answer you have to tell us everything you can about the growing conditions. everything. Otherwise we will just have to give you guesses. We will mostly discuss problems we have but they might be the opposite for you. Your most likely problem is too wet on the soil or too much fertilizer used all the time. Good pictures would also help. every bit of information might give the clue to solve your problem.

Is the bottom heat still on? If so, turn it off. This post was edited by jean001a on Sun, Feb 23, 14 at 22:27

To Ohiofem, That's crazy that you've been growing tomatoes for twenty years and yet just five years you've been doing seeds! And by "new to gardening" I mean NEW to gardening. lol I liked the idea of starting from seed because you get more plants for the money, TONS of varieties to choose from, and, being a stay at home mom of an eight month old, it's been fun to take care of. :) As for heirloom versus hybrid, you ain't kiddin'. My Sungolds are the rock stars. They look awesome and are bigger than the rest. Yeah, they are also cherry tomatoes, but as others have said, a lot of times hybrids are that way-super growers. As for not as easy to grow, it's funny because yeah, my pepper and broccoli plants haven't scared me yet like the tomatoes have a few times. haha That's also good to hear that the problem isn't likely bacterial canker. I was just heartbroken thinking it might have been last night. Looked up the Tomato Girl company as a back up plan should my plants not make it. My local nursery has mostly hybrids and a few heirlooms, but none that I was really interested in. As for hardening off, I got some advice from a guy at the local nursery that my plants seemed to be too large for this stage, so I should start hardening off now to slow down their progress some. That way, he said, I wouldn't have to transplant to bigger pots within the next week or two before I plant them outside. He said then they wouldn't have outgrown the pots they're in now. To Suncitylinda, I did notice that having the fan on them helped bulk out their stems. They used to have pathetic thin stems when I first came back from vacation. See, my first year gardening I planted the seeds, then, having to go to Washington to visit family for two weeks, told my husband all the knowledge I'd learned, and then left the next day. I learned almost everything from reading online and reading forums like this, but, since it's my first year gardening, I had never put any of it into practice. lol Bless my husband's heart though, he tried his darndest to keep them alive, and they did pretty well, except they got leggy. That's what I fixed once I got back. The people at the nursery told me they were leggy, put a fan on them, and gosh darnit! It worked! :D As for sitting them outside, hahaha! Being in Utah, in a NORMAL winter(this one has been uncommonly warm), when I started these seeds there'd be some snow still in patches! Lucky you to be able to put them outside once they pot up. I'm jealous. ;) Also, thanks for the reminder about gardening is to DE-stress, not increase it. lol I know I can't be the only one who stresses about these kinds of things-I see posts like mine every day on this forum. We want our babies to grow up right, and lead productive lives, just like our real kids! ;) So thanks for all the advice ya'll and reminders to just relax. I gotta keep in mind what you said about they grow like weeds. I think maybe we do tend to over worry. I know my seedlings seem to pop back real nice and quick after a problem may arise. :) To Bobby, About the planting more than you need-I know. I'm so glad I assumed for some not germinating, and some didn't. And even still, I have three of each that popped up, so even if one died or didn't look great, I should still be fine with my planting adventures. ^_^ So, after listening to everyone, I've decided to not freak that it's bacterial canker(thank you Ohiofem!), chill and take whatever happens, and just in case my problems arose out of wind burn(as a pic I saw does look a bit similar), am hardening off my plants in our 3 sided carport, so no serious breezes bother it yet(thanks both of those to Suncitylinda!). I want ya'll experts to know. Being a newbie to a field that one could never in a LIFETIME master, I'm so grateful ya'll take the time to help people like me. I know you must get tired of all us new to growing asking you so many questions about possible diseases, how to plant, what varieties are good, but I know, at least for me, knowing ya'll are willing to answer our questions definitely keeps me going. It's so easy to get discouraged, worry you don't know what you're doing, so it's nice to have ya'll telling us we're doing alright and keep it up. :) Hopefully that doesn't sound too cheesy, 'cause I mean it.

Hello all, ...from Europe again :). I hope it is all right to revive this topic almost a year later. Helen, I hope your plant still thrives. I happen to have some problems with my Stromanthe that I thought were rather similar. I took some actions already, it is too early to see the results though. Then I read through all of the above comments and still not sure. I got my plant around a year ago, it was rather small, and grew rapidly. It did have some very little dry ends since the beginning, nothing major. This is how it looks now. Constantly growing new, healthy leaves, but it only takes a couple of weeks tll they all become so dry on ends. I did remove alot of leaves already. I keep the soil moist and mist leaves every day, sometimes even a couple times a day. I give it showers monthly. The humidity in my flat is usually 50%. For a long time I believed it was the humidity issue. Could it be just that? On the other hand I do have Calathea lancifolia (which I believe has similar humidity preference) and it is doing fine. Maybe there is something wrong with the soil, thought, since it was planted in all purpose soil. Yesterday I repotted into a slightly bigger pot. Got rid of most of the soil while trying not to mess with the roots too much. They looked very healthy but started to overgrow the pot. I made a new mix (sort of). Since it is very hard to get the basic ingridents here, for "base" I used store bought soil with Osmocote fertilizer and it said "super light" on the package. They do not give actual information on the ingredients here though. It only said it is a 'peat soil' and is reach with humus. I am defnitely no expert on soil, all I can say it indeed was light and soft to touch, maybe it had some peat moss in it (?) and some perlite already, not much though. This is how it looks like, different to what it was in before for sure. To that I added alot of perlte (around 40 %) and just a tiny bit of orchid mix. I planted the Stromanthe with this mix I made in terracota pot. I am not sure if I did the right thing with all that. The soil soaked up alot of water. I would be very happy if anyone could comment on that.