Are your seeds stuck together? You have to look carefully and should separate the doubled ones before you plant. Your seedlings look OK to me. Sometimes the seed leaves have trouble getting out of the seed coat and are twisted. What I see in your picture is two plants that are too close.

I don't know about your other plants. I do know not all soil mixes that you buy are good and it is easy to make a mistake with fertilizer. Drainage is very important. I had some strange looking plants last spring and I caused it with fertilizer. They need some when they grow bigger but it is easy to give them too much. Same with water.

Edit - to answer one of your questions - since you don't care so much about these and you are worrying about the one, I would pinch it off. You could separate them but why risk it if you think one cherry plant is enough. Also I see you have peat pots. I prefer plastic because drainage seems to be better in them. I reuse plastic flimsy pots that my annual flowers come in. Sometimes if the plant won't easily slide out I cut them and slip the plant out. Also in your other posts you spoke of containers. Gardening can be expensive. Containers meant for other things can be reused as pots. Not all of them are attractive though.

This post was edited by helenh on Tue, Nov 5, 13 at 18:22

Normally in indoor germination the problem is often LEGGY seedling, which is due to inadequate amount of light. I begin to think that you maybe have the opposite problem, TOO MUCH LIGHT, TOO MUCH HEAT(from cfl?) AND TOO CLOSE PROXIMITY. I have seen your other tomato seedling too, with browned out cotyledon leave. I have noticed that you are very much into lighting techniques (intensity, measurements..etc) which is fine, but somehow you are getting not so good results. I like to see a leggy seedling before adjusting my light source.
JMO

Thanks Helen and Seysonn

Seysonn: As you see, the general problem with the beginner gardener is low lighting and heavy watering and I always read it on forums and books and listened to it in videos. It always said that a farther light source was a problem and that overwatering was a bigger problem then underwatering. It got me so frightened that I ended up with too much light and underwatering. :-)

Btw, before that light metering I would have never known that more light could be one of the problem and therefore from then ownards I moved the CFLs further away from the top of the seedlings. Seemed to be going fine. And like you said, I too now bring the lights closer when I see leggy seedlings.

Btw, some how my hunch is that the above problem did not start off with more light as the distance of the light source was the same for both seedlings. This twisty curly leaf of one of the seedling started off with under watering and then it remains in this very awkward shape.

In this thread the straight seedling looks fine to me. In your other post about problems with seedlings, they did look a little scorched or something. So you have improved.

The seed leaves have to emerge from the seed coat. If it is dry they can stick and get twisted. Seed leaves don't have to look good. Soon you will get some true leaves. I have had the seed coat stick and had to help the leaves unfurl. I have read Carolyn speak of the problem and she suggested a little saliva (spit).

I see nothing wrong with your best seedling in this picture.

This post was edited by helenh on Wed, Nov 6, 13 at 1:45

As much as I hate to destroy something that is still alive, sometimes it's best to cut your losses and concentrate on that which is healthy.