What a difference a day makes!
With the extended version of winter this year working at opposites to what we would like, we are germinating our seeds inside, in the kitchen and the living room. Since the seeds germinate in the dark on some high shelves where it is warm, they have to be checked constantly because they need light as soon as they sprout. Well, we missed a day. Germination came surprisingly soon for these 144 tomatoes, only four days after sowing. We didn’t check them until the fifth day, and much to our consternation, they were already above ground and reaching, well, stretching actually, for the light. Except there wasn’t any light. This was our second seeding of tomatoes, the first batch you can see below; we got to them just as they were curling up though the soil, and they went right under the lights on our propagation rack.
We were not happy to see the leggy seedlings, after we wrung our hands and moaned for a minute or so, we realized that the truth is that they will be just fine. We will have to re-pot them sooner than planned, but we will bury the stem deep, and they will be happy. Tomatoes grow roots from any buried stem, so we are looking at that advantage. It will be extra work, and crowd our growing space to the limit if it doesn’t warm up soon so we can get some things in the greenhouse. That’s farmin’ though.