It has been 2 months since I started seeds and I can barely contain all the growth. The last average frost date for 2009 is April 26th here so I still have a few weeks before transplanting outside.
Basil
Tomatoes
Brookhaven Gardens
So Much Beauty In Dirt…
Brookhaven Gardens 
How did you keep 8 week old tomatoes that small?
Hi Jimmy,
The tomatoes have been transplanted once into the larger peat pots and I buried them a few inches deeper. I think that has contributed to why they look small. I have kept the lights about 2 inches from them the whole time as well. I hope they spring up quickly once I start hardening them off in a few days.
Unless those peat pots are 6 inches wide (and I’m missing the scale of the photo completely) you have a knack I lack. My tomatoes behave for about 4 weeks, sometimes even 6, but towards the end they grow so fast that many 8 week old plants are 14 or 16 inches taller than the pot they are in and have to be very carefully transplanted out to the garden.
Do you use the cheapest bulbs available, or did you spring for more expensive lighting?
The pots are 3″ pots. I fully anticipated them being much larger by now but they seem content staying compact. I am using cheap Phillips bulbs that say Good Color Rendering on the box. I have a timer set to 14 hours of light each day which I think may not be quite enough. It seems that all my plants are quite small and compact except for the large Basil varieties which are now growing an inch every few days.