Do you have a source of air flow like a fan or slightly open window? Fungal infections can wipe out plants in one day from stagnant air.

What kind of potting mix are they in? Fertilizer used?

How far from the lights are the plants?

I used burpee organic seed starting mix.

The lights are only a couple inches from the plants.

There is no fan.

I've heard chamomile tea works to prevent dampening off

They are in the basement/laundry room. There isn’t any direct air flow from a fan but it’s not a stagnant room either. Not saying your wrong just curious.

I too start tomatoes in my basement laundry room. Under florescent shop lites. From your photos I think the plants definitely look mighty yellow in color.

This would not kill them off however. I would point out that your growing media seems very short on nitrogen. I too would suggest fertilizing your plants with a liquid fertilizer at 1/2 strength.

dampening off sounds like a factor. I have no fans on my plants and only had the issue once. I have always remembered to never buy that starter mix brand again that I had that year. Since then I have never had that problem.

I think I would start over with tomatoes and cukes with a different starter mix. Peppers are much slower growing so not sure if you want to re-start. When I grew peppers, I always started them around March 20th and tomatoes around April 12th for my growing area (SE WI).

Mine are in the basement too, with the window slightly propped open. The ONE time in 40 years I had damping off was when I had the window closed for some reason. Never again. Just sayin'. Airflow, less wet (bottom water).

I agree, lack of air movement on the plants and a bit too wet. Get a fan.

I’m going to restart the peppers and tomatoes tonight. If they aren’t big enough I can always buy plants from the store.

The peppers were planted on March 10th too. I would think they should be much bigger than they are now.

Cinnamon can control damp off and it smells good when you water later on. Just sprinkle it on the soil surface at the first sign that you think you may have it and let the soil dry before watering again.

Alec:

Here are some shots of my cheap set up. First shows my tomatoes in my basement laundry room. I use chains to hang a board under my florescent lights. The chains allow me to easily lower the board as the plants get taller.

2nd shot shows my tomato seedlings currently. They did receive one watering with 1/2 strength liquid fertilizer so far.

3rd shot shows the starter mix they are in. I am very pleased with this local brand (Stein's Garden center is a chain in S.E. WI). Sadly I am very low on it so I bought some more at a different chain store this year. I just realized it is Burpee Organic Starter Mix. The same stuff you are having trouble with! Hopefully I will be ok with it as dampening off normally is only an issue on young seedlings. I will use some of the Burpee mix when I transplant my seedlings to individual pots.

My tomatoes are an heirloom variety so I save my own seed each year. 2 of the small cells pictured are with seeds that are 2 years old and for a test the 3rd cell was planted with 3 year old seeds. Every seed grew! I don't need 25 plants so the horrible task of deciding which get to be transplanted or not will soon be upon me. I used to do peppers, tomatoes, leeks and onions but now I just start tomatoes. I wish you well on your 2nd crop of plants!

First of four tomatoes just started to break the surface. I still have the heat mat under the tray and lid on. When do I remove the lid and mat? Still waiting on 3 tomatoes, 3 peppers.

Take the lid off now. The other plants will be up in the next day or 2. Moisture under there leads to rot. The seeds are moist under the soil. You want the roots to grow downward.

Remove them from the heat mat when the plants break through the surface. You don't want to cook them. Grow on at 65 or 70 degrees till it's time to harden them off outdoors after last frost. Keep up airflow.

Ok thanks.

Alec

Your tomatoes came up in 3 days! Wow a heat mat sure makes a difference. I do not have a heat mat so I put mine on top of my refrigerator and cover them until germinated. Mine took 6 days to germinate. As soon as I see the first tomato up, I take off the cover and put them under my florescent lights. Susan's post above is great!

Tomatoes were seeded on the 25th. Here are the results so far. I haven’t watered them yet since the initial watering when I seeded.

The “Frederick” variety germinated very quickly.

No peppers up yet.

Alec, you need to do something about your lighting. I see nothing green growing.

That is the color from the lights. The plants are green.

I use bright cool fluorescent growlights (6500K)...I know the advice is to get warm and cool bulbs but that never worked for me; I got sickly looking plants just like yours. You only need full spectrum if you want them to fruit/bloom inside. My peppers were started at the end of March and some of them are six inches tall, the hot peppers are a bit slower growing. I have never used a heat mat nor fan and they are growing in my basement, never had an issue with damping off. Be careful about overwatering, that can cause a lot of problems. I use Promix as a starting medium and it works great, much better than anything else I've used.

Everything still seems to be growing slowly to me. I went out and bought some plants, nothing looks ready to plant except the zucchini and cucumber. Tomatoes and peeper plants were seeded april 25th. Perhaps next year I'll try regular fluorescent lights.

These are the lights I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075861YV2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Well, 50w (if they really are that) placed very close (like 1" above) is probably okay. What's the recommendation, like 100w/sq. ft. or something like that? (rhetorical, I forget). That can be part. Some of them look okay.

1. Are the ones with more leaves closer to the light?

2. What, if anything, do you feed your seedlings with?

The larger plants are a zucchini and cucumber. The zucchini was started before the others. The cucumber at the same time as tomatoes and peppers.

I don’t feed them anything until they set true leaves then give them a diluted miracle grow.

They are are all the same distance from the light.