So that was so helpful. I am in zone 7 between Tulsa and OKC on the turnpike. I have them in a sunny spot but they were stretching towards the window. I've turned on the light above them and they're already improving. Above is before I did this.

I will go ahead with the few carrots I planted and direct sow the rest of the packet. I know carrots are pretty particular, but wanted to give them a shot anyway. Thank you so much for all the suggestions!

You're welcome. That's a darling little garden helper you have in the photo. I bet she is going to love helping you with the garden.

Now that we can see your seedlings, yes, they are leggy because they are starving for light. This is common with seedlings grown indoors. Keep them in as strong of a light as you can manage (without instantly moving them out into full sun). Even the strongest indoor lights are not nearly as strong as natural sunlight and that's why seedlings grown indoors get leggy so fast. For some reason, lettuce is especially bad about becoming leggy. I will sprout lettuce indoors, and try to move it outside into the sun on the very first day it sprouts merely to avoid the legginess so common when it grows inside.

If you pot up the young seedlings into individual containers (I use paper cups in all sizes, from 3 oz to 9 oz for potting up), bury the leggy stems gently in the soil as you pot up and that will help keep them from flopping around.

Carrots are divas, so whatever works is great. I grew them indoors once in paper cups and transplanted them into the ground just to see if it would work. I had cut the bottoms out of the cups, lined them up in a 1020 flat, filled them with a sterile, soil-less seed-starting mix and sowed the seeds. I grew them the year before that in the cardboard tubes from rolls of toilet paper and from paper towel tubes cut down to the same length as the rolls from the toilet paper. They also worked. On the day that I planted the transplants into the garden (they still were small and the roots were coming out of the bottoms of the cups), I sowed seeds directly into the soil, sort of as a science experiment to see what worked best. The seeds sown directly sprouted, grew and quickly outgrew the transplants, and produced healthier plants and larger carrots. However, the transplants did produce edible carrots...they just weren't as big (long) as the others. Like I said, whatever gives you a harvest is good, no matter what method you use. That's not just one right way---there are many ways and half the fun of gardening is finding different ways to arrive at the same destination (the harvest). I think gardening is the most fun when I am trying to do things in ways that are different or unusual.

Yes she is quite the helper, eats more dirt than vegetables :)

In one day the lights have made improvements. Planning to direct sow some containers this weekend to see what I can get to work. I've never started seeds myself so this is a new and exciting endeavor. It really is fun and exciting to see the change, I love playing in the yard!

You are definitely in the right place here

That is great news about the lights helping. Just remember to keep them very close to the plants. You don't want for the plants to touch the lights, but the less empty air space between the plants and the lights, the less legginess you'll see.

This is definitely the right place to come if you enjoy playing in the yard and the dirt. We're all addicting to playing in the dirt and playing in or with the dirt.

Yes glad to be here! This cold wet weather today made me yearn for spring that much more. I am ready to be out in the yard, we have some major landscape and garden plans this year and I can't wait!