So I started my lettuce seeds indoors a couple of weeks ago. The indoor lettuce seedlings started out very quickly and were looking good for a while.
Then I noticed that they were getting kind of leggy and starting to droop over. They were looking pretty sad.
My first thought was that I was giving them too much light so I moved them to another shelf that did not have a grow light. On this shelf they were getting sunlight through a large window for about 8 hours a day.
At first this seemed to make them happy. They started perking up and standing straight up. But a couple of days later they were looking pretty pathetic again. Drooping over and looking listless.
After thinking about it for a while, and rewatching some YouTube videos, I came to the conclusion that I had them too far away from the grow lights.
I initially had the seedlings about 12 inches from the grow lights. Almost all of the videos that I watched recommended that the seedlings be 2-4″ from the grow lights.
So I added another grow light to the shelf that the lettuce is on and placed the seedlings about 3 inches from the light.
The results were noticeable very quickly. Withing 20 minutes some of the plants started standing up like they were reaching for the light. Others have slowly started to lift up.
Hopefully I have corrected my mistake before I did any permanent damage to these my indoor lettuce.
The only good news is that it is still early enough in the year that if I have to start over I can and I will still have enough time to get a nice crop of lettuce this year.
