

Keep lights close to the plants’ tops.
REPOTTING TOMATO SEEDLINGS FULL
If tomato plants don’t get the right kind of light (I.e., the full spectrum of cool and warm waves), they will still stretch to look for the light. Make sure your grow lights provide a full spectrum of light.Most homes don’t have enough direct light for enough hours of the day to keep seedlings from growing leggy. Preventing Legginess in Tomato Seedlings If your tomato seedlings start to look leggy, adjust the lights, so they are just a couple of inches from the plants’ tops. But don’t ignore the other possible causes because if your lights seem right, something else, like heat or water, is what’s probably causing your legginess issue.

Tomatoes can grow upwards quite quickly if they are reaching for the light. Of these, problems related to lighting are almost always the cause of leggy tomato seedlings, so start by addressing that.

There are three main causes of legginess in tomato seedlings: Understanding those causes is key to preventing legginess, to begin with. The causes of legginess in tomato seedlings are the same as the causes of legginess in all seedlings.

Legginess is when seedlings grow tall, thin, weak stems. Legginess in tomato seedlings is most commonly caused by light issues, but there are other possible causes. Or at least live next door to someone who does.Ī few more weeks under the grow lights and these re-potted heirloom tomatoes will be making their way out to the greenhouse to harden off.Legginess is one of the most-if not the most-common problem for people who start their own tomato plants inside. If you want to eat real food, you’re going to need to grow it yourself. Memories of picking vegetables from your grandmother’s garden and sitting on the porch steps eating fresh onions and tomatoes, raw out of the garden, start to come back to you. You slowly start to remember what real food used to taste like when you were a kid. Getting back to the land, and growing your own food, does something to you. Once you have had a real tomato, you’ll start to walk past the pathetic, gassed, unripe, mushy ones they sell in the stores. There is no greater taste on earth than biting into a real, sun ripened, heirloom tomato grown right in your very own backyard.Ĭaution: Growing your own tomatoes can turn you into a tomato snob. Re-potting tomato seedlings really gets me excited about gardening. I spent yesterday morning re-potting 120 117 of my heirloom tomato plants.
