Seedlings weak and leggy

I'm finding that I need something to occupy myself these days. It needs to be something that keeps me active and engaged and this something happens to be gardening. It's still too cold to be outside for long periods of time to work on the garden, but it's not too cold to start seeds indoors.

There are issues to starting seedlings indoors in our house. Our window sills don't get enough sunlight. So the poor things are coming up all leggy and weak. I tried passing my hand over them several times a day to get them to toughen up, but to no avail. Finally, I caved and bought a grow light. I honestly didn't want to spend money on growing seeds, but everything I've read mentions that starting seeds indoors means leggy seedlings unless you get a grow light.

So we went the garden store and bought a bunch of stuff: a planter, potting soil, fertilizer, grow light for countertop, grow light for dwarf tree (more on that in a bit), humidity dome, and a Meyer Lemon tree. The lemon tree is a purchase I am particularly excited about. I had bought one last year, but it was definitely NOT patio size. The one I got last year is as tall as I am and was pruned into this weird, lopsided Y shape. The big meyer lemon tree is not doing well and I think it's going to die. The truth is, I never liked it anyways. So when I saw the little lemon trees at the garden store, the kind that I've always imagined dwarf meyer lemon trees to look like, I got a pot and a grow light for it too.

Citrus trees like a lot of light. I think that's why our bit citrus trees didn't do well this winter. The one grow light we had on them was not enough. My jasmine plant also suffered a great deal, though even before it wintered indoors, there were bugs eating the leaves. I sprayed the jasmine plant with a mixture of minty liquid soap, canola oil, baking soda and water and the bugs died. Unfortunately, I think the plants still suffered from lack of enough light. So they have now been brought upstairs under a different setup.

We have a pendant light at the edge of our kitchen and we put the large citrus trees there. They were in that position before and didn't do too well, but they did better there than in the basement. We put the grow light in the pendant and I fed the trees with some of my newly purchased fertilizer. On the kitchen window sill, I placed the jasmine plant and the small lemon tree and clipped the newly purchased clip-on grow light above them. The lady at the garden store said to put the grow light close, but not so close that the plants can feel heat coming from it. On the far kitchen counter, we set up the counter-top grow light fixture. This is where we placed all our seedlings. The grow light is lowered as close as possible to the seedlings without them feeling too much heat.

The idea of putting the grow lights close is to keep the plants from straining to get more light. Straining to get more light makes them leggy. Some setups include a little fan to simulate wind and to to keep mold from growing on the moist soil. I am not intending to set up a fan. Maybe I'll just blow on the plants every morning and night? Lol! Anyways, I'm a little concerned as to how much energy this is costing us, but my desire for healthy seedlings and indoor plants has overruled my instinct to be frugal. If only my house got more sunlight! I console myself by saying that this is only temporary. Once the weather is nice and warm the seedlings and plants will be moved outside. I'm hoping that this year's experiments produce some good eats!