u/averyboringfarm

Hi, sorry for the new account, promise I'm a real person.

I really need help. I have room for a huge garden and but I haven't been able to get anything going inside.

So I moved to the PDX area after decades in dry, cold, sunny Central Oregon and I felt like I could grow almost anything there (seasons permitting. But I was donating hundreds of pounds of produce a week by the end of summer.) There I started seeds simply on a desk in front of a sunny window and then moved them out to a friends place under Ag cloth until the weather would get milder. Now I'm here and I have room for seed starting shelves but every time I try to grow anything: the seeds germinate fine, they look good as starts, and then it's like they freeze in time at the first 2 little cotyledons. They'll stay that way for about 3 weeks and then turn yellow.

They don't get leggy. They don't get thin. They don't have fungus (that I can see) they just... simply don't thrive after they germinate.

Dozens of types of herbs, greens, squash, flowers, etc I've tried growing pretty much anything you can think of.

- Soil: I've tried 6 different brands of soil, (Happy Frog, Black Gold, generic potting soil, peat, etc, including straight up steer manure from Lowes.) All the seeds start with a pretty decent germination rate regardless of what I use but manure and happy frog got things slightly further along.

-I've tried fertilizing and not fertilizing and the results seem the same except the squash/pumpkin types did get past the first 2 leaves with fertilizer but still not great until I put them outside. The leafy greens had no change.

- Light: The lighting is about 6 inches above the trays. (and again, they're not leggy) I have it on from 7am - 8pm. I am using "Barrina Plant Grow Lights, 4FT 5000K Full Spectrum Daylight White, 252W(6 x 42W, 1400W Equivalent), T8 LED Grow Light Strips" 2 light strips for each level.

- Airflow: After attempt 2 I tried using little fans on low too. Fans or not, same result. In the living room you can see them moving ever so slightly from the overhead fan that's always going.

- Water: I have 50 plug trays and 72 plug trays from Johnnys. I have been bottom watering but I do try to not keep them too soggy. I try to let them cycle through it and get slightly little dry before I add more water again.

- Placement 1: I had them in my mudroom, which is all windows and bright as it can be here in the early spring. I thought maybe was maybe too humid? 70-85% and it was often 75-90f.

- Placement 2: So after 4 attempts in the mudroom with different soil I moved them into my very-open living room with good air flow. About 40% humidity. 68f. Things seemed like maybe they were going better. The dill, squash-types, and peas progressed. Everything else doesn't grow past the first leaves. Even lettuce and radishes! Like what?! I did use fertilizer at 2.5 weeks on the 6th attempt, when everything seemed frozen in place again, but that ^ was the only impact.

My husband thinks its the lighting strips not having a good spectrum, and honestly I don't know what else to think because I feel like experimented with most everything else and nothing is changing. Once I put the starts outside, at least the ones that make it because they're all so tiny and weak, they do start progressing. But they're so small they're hard to transplant and the bugs/slugs/birds get to a bunch of them when they're tiny which is why I was hoping to get them further along inside. Any ideas? I feel like I'm going utterly insane. I use to be able to grow from seeds so well for years but it's too rainy here in the Spring to put the trays outside during the day, which is what I used to do in the near-desert.
Thank you!

Edit: Another comment made me realize I should add: I'm growing a bunch of stuff I know is too late to get to harvest this year simply because I want to figure out why its failing with my indoor set-up BEFORE I need it to work for the 2027 year. I keep restarting spring varieties so I don't have to fail again when it matters again.