7 MISTAKES To Avoid With Tomato Seedlings 🌱

In today's video, we're sharing 7 common tomato seedling mistakes to avoid making. We have made most of these errors in our years of gardening, so take our advice to save yourself some trouble!
Growing tomatoes is a lot of fun, especially since the plants are fast-growing and resilient. But there are many things you can do in the garden to help them grow as healthy and strong as possible.
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Plant tomatoes deep:
bit.ly/3LEe9Qr
Recommended seedling supplies:
peppergeek.com/supplies
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:21 Humidity dome
1:19 Light
2:11 Over-watering
2:42 Fertilizer
3:36 Thinning
4:23 Hardening off
6:08 Planting deep
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🖥 geekygreenhouse.com
🌱 USDA Hardiness Zone: 6A
🌶 / peppergeek
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Thanks for watching Geeky Greenhouse!
#gardening #tomatoes

[@stephencaldwell4569]

You guy’s are too funny, 😂I am laughing watching your Content👍🏿

[@geekygreenhouse]

☺️ glad you enjoy

[@davidniemi6553]

One other random tip -- when bottom-watering, look carefully at the water left behind. If you see small narrow white things that move suddenly, they are probably fungus gnat larvae. A good reason to change the water frequently, but this is inconvenient when fertilizing via bottom-watering. Unfortunately fungus gnats force you into a lot of otherwise suboptimal choices. I would love a mild, convenient, otherwise non-toxic additive you could add while bottom-watering to kill them -- maybe a drop of dish soap? Or a potting soil that is designed to prevent them? Otherwise, I'm concerned bottom-watering could spread the larvae from pot to pot. While nowhere near as bad as the last two years, the tiny number of surviving fungus gnats indoors are quite a nuisance yet again. Getting my plants outdoors as fast as I can.

[@tbluemel]

Great video!! Thanks!

[@TwoMarshmallows1]

Very helpful, thank you!

[@davidniemi6553]

I've noticed some key additional differences between most peppers and most tomatoes this year that I had not fully appreciated before: 1) peppers have much stronger stems and tomatoes are much more prone to getting leggy. 2) tomatoes can tolerate temperatures in the upper 30s (F) and bright sun with less hardening off than peppers. (though the tomatoes I favor do tend to be more cold-hardy than most, and there are also big differences in cold-hardiness of peppers in this temperature range -- but, on average, tomatoes can go outside sooner than peppers). 3) peppers can be started sooner than tomatoes for multiple reasons -- they take longer to develop, are less likely to get leggy, and leggy tomatoes are a nightmare to support in small indoors pots. Larger pots and in-ground you have much better options. 4) At least this year, my young tomato seedlings were very fussy about getting too dry (especially with a fan or in a smallish pot) or too wet (overwatered or in too small a pot). 5) Related to 4) potting soil that has poor water management characteristics is terrible for small tomato seedlings. I had way too many young tomatoes keep dropping their lower branches or having them get dry and crispy. I found it well worth using top-notch potting soil like Happy Frog while in small pots (up to 3.5" / 8cm), you just don't need that much of it at that stage and that is when it matters most. I learned that lesson too late for many of my too-early tomatoes. Once outdoors my tomatoes rebounded and most recovered, but I started many of them them too soon indoors to take advantage of this until many were a weak spindly mess. For me in zone 7a, too early for Tomatoes means January, while February and March is prime time for starting tomatoes indoors; while April is too late, at least for long-season indeterminates.

[@QuentinCocozza]

What a pleasure to follow you from France ! It's nice from you to translate fahrenheit to celcius ;).

[@PreatorRaszagal]

Haha love the little bloopers in the end 👌And thanks for reminding me to start bringing my little seedlings outside. They don't have any true leaves yet, but might as well start early. They'll live on a glassed balcony, so winds won't be a problem, though too much sun could be a potential issue.

[@geekygreenhouse]

We used to grow on a balcony and the temperatures would _bake_, sometimes going well over 110°F. It was like a mini greenhouse, but our peppers loved it.

[@PreatorRaszagal]

@@geekygreenhouse Haha nice. 110°F might be a smidge too hot (at least for me), but we'll see! I just got the balcony glassed last year so this will be the first season with my "mini greenhouse". There'll be "some" peppers growing out there as well. They also just started getting hardened off 👌

[@JogBird]

seedling runts can be cute litte dwarf plants if youre a hobbyist

[@markcarruthers3313]

Very good video on starting tomatoes from seeds.👍👍 Fortunately, between my errors last year (my first starting from seeds) with some successes & some failures, watching a lot of videos since, my success this year is better. I just started following you (subscribed) and am curious to know where you are to understand the reason(s) for why & when you are doing some things.

[@jimcott2203]

Good points. Trying to grow from seed for the first time. Germination good. I have the lights (fluorescent) almost touching and still very thin stems.

[@geekygreenhouse]

They develop pretty quickly though, they’re thin and then just a few days later they really start to thicken up!

[@Treycotwright]

Whats up man 🎉❤🎉

[@gardeningtipswithvicky]

In my zone 11b we don't need a hardening off.but I really don't have South window and I don't have enough grow lights for all my babies

[@ingekaivola4685]

Another mistake, that I'm guilty of ... starting your tomatoes too early!!!

[@aquarungirl5167]

First time I hear mention of different heights for LED vs fluorescent. Explains a lot. Do you have a suggestion for LED?

[@geekygreenhouse]

Ours are around 75-150W lights, and we usually place them around 12-24” above the plants

[@someblokecalleddave1]

The plants sitting in front of your in this vid - how many weeks old are they? I'm really struggling with mine, although this has been a really dark spring with virtually no sun. Damn the cold weather factor as well. I don't think my tomatoes are going to go well.

[@Treycotwright]

first like & comment 😂😂😂

[@sciencesaves]

I have some sun sugars starting now too :) and sun drops

[@geekygreenhouse]

Tomato names always sound so delicious..can’t wait to have some fresh “sun sugar” tomatoes 🤤

[@sciencesaves]

@@geekygreenhouse me too :) I also have sweet peppers going this year. Sweet datil, habanada, jimmy nardello, corbaci and monkey face. I can’t wait!!!