How long from sprout to ready?

[sirtanon]

Well, it appears that my seed-starting endeavors this fall have met with much difficulty.. I don't know, maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems to me that my seedlings are growing incredibly slow, and half of them have either died off, or are looking very weak.

Even my mango seedling is having trouble.

So I thought it prudent to ask, so I know whether or not they ARE growing slowly.. how long should it take for my seedlings to go from this:




to this:



I only ask because at this point, even my most mature seedlings, which at this point have been up for about 3 weeks now, barely even have 2 SMALL true leaves.

Suffice to say, I'm getting very discouraged

[dcarch]

Something is not right. I have not seen seedlings like this.

Not the right kind of light?
Not enough light?

Bad soil?

dcarch

[feldon30]

Those seem tall and leggy. The light may not be bright enough (should be 40W, if possible one cool white and one natural light bulb) or not close enough or not on long enough.

I had my lights on 16 hours a day, 2" from the top of the tallest sprout.

[sirtanon]

I should make a notation.. those pictures are not MY plants.. but pictures that I've "borrowed" from other posts - I'm just trying to illustrate something here.

MY plants aren't leggy.. they're about the right height.. they're just not growing very well.

After about 24 days or so as a seedling, my tallest one is only about 2" tall and has only a very small set of leaves...

...whereas, those two pictures were actually from Tylenol's post here:
http://www.tomatoville.com/viewtopic.php?t=2570

Hell, I only wish my plants were looking as good as those of the 2nd pic.

[feldon30]

24 days does sound like a long time. What are the temperatures where the seedlings are growing?

At 20 days, mine looked like the second picture in tylenol's post.

[sirtanon]

Well, I have my seedlings on a bench in the closet in my office. Yeah, I know... odd place for them, but it's convenient and offers a good place to hang the shop light.

The temps... about 82-85 degrees.

[tylenol]

sirtanon,

As you have read, the plants I'm growing are part of the Dwarf Project. They are Doc F2 seeds saved in June. I'm looking for dwarfs, but will grow out some that are not.

I started seed on 7/23 and they started to show 7/27.
The seedling pic you posted above was taken 24 hours after they started to come up. I put them under two- 4 foot, 2 light flourescents..4 bulbs total, right after takng that pic on 7/28. I use cool white and replaced them this spring. Sounds to me like your using the same setup, so maybe some new bulbs would help.

I use Unigrow soilless starting mix. I tried MG and one other mix,with ferts, but had better results with the soilless. I don't use anything else to help them along and bottom water them once a week. As Feldon mentioned,they get 16 hours of light a day.
I repotted on 8/10, using soilless mix, on 8/10 and they looked like this. The other picture above was taken on 8/14.

http://[img]http://i50.photobucket.c....jpg[/img]

One thing I did pay attention to, that I didn't in the Spring,was to make sure I didn't pack the soil too much when I potted them up. I let the water do that and added mix loosely to fill the pots. I think it helps the roots get to where they wanna go. I started hardening off the bunch on Thurs. 8/17. I'm gonna start planting them out this coming weekend 8/26 and the next 9/2 . Soooooooo from seed to planting will be 34 to 41 days.
Here's a pic from this morning 8/21.

http://[img]http://i50.photobucket.c...> <br /> Rob

[feldon30]

Those are some class A seedlings. Mine didn't look quite that good.