Tomatoes Grow 3/4 Inch, Wilt, and Die
by Chris
(Ashby Mass. )
My tomato seedlings sprout, grow 3/4 inch, and die. They are under good light, 75 to 80 degrees in the day, at night maybe 55 to 60 degrees. Thanks.
Answer: Chris- this is classic wilt. This is usually caused by having the soil too wet (which excludes oxygen) combined with too cool temperatures. Powdery mildew and wilt love these conditions. I have two suggestions (maybe three) that should eliminate the problem.
First, when you mix up your seed starting soil mix, pre-moisten it. Mix it nice and evenly. It is the perfect moisture when you squeeze a fist full tightly and only get a few drops out of it. Next, fill the seed starting tray and pop in your tomato seeds as you probably did before. With a spray bottle gently mist the top layer of soil. As long as you keep a humidity dome over the seeds until they sprout, this is all the water they will need for now- do not water them more until they sprout and you remove the humidity dome and the top layer of soil goes dry.
In the meantime, you need to warm up the night time temperatures. Keep a thermometer next to the seed tray so you know for sure. The ideal temperature is 70-75 degrees. At 80 degrees, the seedlings will want to stretch (even if you have the light close). Somewhere around 65 degrees and less, you will begin having problems again with the wilt....especially if the soil is too wet.
Even though this is not exactly part of your original question- once the humidity dome has been removed and the seedlings are over an inch tall, they will benefit greatly from an oscillating fan. It creates microscopic tears in the tissue of the stem as they flutter in breeze a little bit. As the tomato plants grow and repair this normal damage it greatly strengthens the stem, so your plants will be able to stand up strong all by themselves and not be as loose as a cooked spaghetti noodle and leaning over or falling down.
Follow these recommendations as closely as you can, and you should have some dandy tomato plants to plant outside come May! I would love to hear how they turn out, and Happy Growing!
AffordableGarden Design&Setup
Hi everyone, Jason from Jason's Indoor Guide here. When I got started with hydroponic gardening more than 24 years ago, my first garden used rockwool cubes and B.C. Nutrients....and I remember thinking to myself yeah, sure, there may be a lot of advantages to gardening with hydroponics, for example there are very few pest problems, therefore very little pest control, no weeding, no plowing or tilling the soil, no soil testing or having to add things into the garden soil, no watering the garden....but for someone who just wants to grow their own vegetables and have more control over their food supply and the quality of the food that they eat, the cost of constantly having to buy grow media and hydroponic nutrients makes this an expensive hobby for most people...
Epic Nutrient Change
I suppose when you take into consideration how much money you save NOT
having to buy food at the grocery store, it is surely cheaper to grow
your own food hydroponically even with the cost of high quality
nutrients. Nevertheless, I didn't have a whole lot of money to work with
and I needed to make my efforts as affordable and effective as
possible....and in the last 24 years I HAVE learned a thing or two!
As you browse through Jason's Indoor Guide, you will notice all of the
systems that I use personally are homemade systems. As I got 3 or 4
years of experience under my belt, I quickly adopted a preference to
standing water systems and systems that use expanded clay pellets or
lava rock, because the media is re-usable and it eliminates a huge
operating expense. So once a hydroponic system is built, garden
maintenance is minimal- check and adjust the nutrient solution daily,
and to change it completely every 2 weeks....and the biggest operating
cost is the hydroponic nutrients. (and the electric bill, lol)...
Homemade Cloner
And, regarding the cost of the nutrients....I experimented for about 3 years with making different compost teas and nutrient teas, but there is still a lot of expense $$$ associated with making high quality nutrient teas....like kelp meal, liquid seaweed, rock dust, bat guano, un-Sulfured molasses, worm castings. You can eliminate a lot of this expense by becoming an expert at making high-quality colloidal humus compost, and use your properly made compost as the basis of your hydroponic nutrient solution.
Unfortunately, I have been gardening for over 24 years and I have only
just recently mastered this difficult skill....and even then, only
because I happened to find a very easy to follow, high quality technique
and decided to follow the instructions to the letter. I produced more
high quality compost in just one week than I was able to use in a whole
year! If you can master the technique, I highly recommend it. It is one of the top 3 things you can do to
increase the productivity of your food production efforts, while at the
same time decreasing the amount of effort required to grow all of your
own food, and decreasing the total cost of operating your food
production system.
And when I say decrease operating costs, I mean decrease them to almost
ZERO, especially if you are producing your own nutrients...
High Efficiency
Hydroponics
The ultimate solution to eliminate the cost of your hydroponic nutrients: Imagine a hydroponic system that does not require you to buy any nutrients, does not require you to make your own compost, and does not require you to brew your own nutrient tea. Seriously! No cost and no effort as far as providing nutrients to your plants! Plus, at the end of the gardening cycle you harvest all of your garden vegetables, PLUS YOU HARVEST FISH from the system--->
Aquaponics
This solution is aquaponics. If you are serious about producing all of your own food and being self-sufficient, this is the ultimate solution for reducing expenses (as much as possible), reducing the total amount of work required, and maximizing the productivity of your gardening efforts. I have been gardening for over 24 years, and it is the perfect food production solution in my opinion.
Besides mastering how to make high quality compost, learning aquaponics is one of the top 3 things you can do to increase your garden productivity, reduce your total costs, and reduce your total work. The product that I learned from is called Aquaponics4you. With all of my hydroponic gardening experience, the first time I came across the Aquaponics4you product I knew immediately that it was something very special! Place an aquaponics system outdoors and use the sun instead of grow lights, and you have reduced every garden expense to nearly ZERO!
The Same System/ 10 Weeks Later!
