Help With Growing Seeds

I did plant some sweet peas, a week or 2 ago, not too worried as it was a packet of Lidl’s for 29p I think and was out of date last year. Not overly worried if these fail.

 

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There you go and been on here less than a month and sharing pictures of my spare room which shows the only room I have to grow seeds, it is not the glass house at Kew!!!! Not that much room.

Look closely and you can see my Sweet Peas as described above.

It is South facing.

 

Splendid, but....
if domestically possible:
Move table under the window, ideally level to the windowcill. Your sweet peas are showing signs of leggyness !
Trays unused could be stored elsewhere (below to give max space for growing.

 

Could you possibly get some cheap lighting, seedlings are not going to do well in those conditions, they are stretching to get to the light.

 

I cannot move my bench directly under the window, as I wouldn’t get through the door.

The unused trays will be used for when I start sowing my annual bedding and that will grow where the unused trays are.

Does leggyness mean the plants move to the direction of the sun?

I do have lighting.

 

Yes they are straining to get to the light from the window.
By lighting I mean gro lights not just a light in the room.

 

These are lights I bought off Amazon a couple years ago, they’re the only ones I bought. The others I bought last year and are built into the plant tray. These Sweet Peas I planted some 2 weeks ago, others 1 week ago, I didn’t give them any bottom heat, so didn’t expect them to take so quickly.
I will chop the tops off to encourage more growth, but I do expect to lose these. I do have more seeds, I think I have 5 packets in my seed box.

I am a nightmare when it comes to buying seeds, always end up with many more packets than I need, they seem to say buy me, when I go to the supermarket or DIY store.

 

It is also becoming clear the mistakes I was making; the first is planting too early in February with poor light levels then tried to harden them off to quickly and the temperature/light levels haven’t been there in middle of March.

So last year I bought off Amazon those plant trays that are plugs, these have the LED lights built in and thought I could use basic seed compost to grow plugs, with these LEDs lights built in and a heat mat I didn’t need to prick out with the correct light/heat mat I could grow straight away as a plug. I was thinking what a commercial grower would do, if they can do it, I can do it.

it didn’t work hence I ended up on here asking for help.

The long and short of it is that nature always wins.

 

If I was you I'd have those lights on those seedlings that are getting pretty leggy.

 

I never knew before what it meant was when a plant became leggy, I just had a read up on it online, I can see now what it is when a plant grows all stem but no leaf, didn’t know this before. I put the lights on the other side of the plant than the window. Saying that it is very sunny and bright at the moment.

 

Yes,the problem is the plants grow towards the light, so the best position for the lights is directly above the seedlings.

And it's quite surprising how close the lights need to be, just a foot above would be my guess.

 

I do have some lightedgrow areas in my cellar but it is not a large area so I use these rolling carts to add more growing area. They allow me to move them in front of the window and can easily be pushed out of the way when I need to get by. Maybe something like this would work for you? Mine are 3 feet long and one foot wide

 

A couple more photos, with the lights on/off, theses can be made out better in the daylight. Do I leave the lights on 24 hours?

 

Just curious but why would you have empty containers taking up valuable window space?

 

Are you saying, I should move my sweet peas in the spot suggested? That place you suggest is where I will start seedling when I get into the swing.