This just can't be good

For days now I've been telling dh that my seedlings downstairs aren't doing well, not well at all. And he's been brushing me off laughing at me saying I'm just impatient just wait they'll grow give them time. HA.

I did some checking, they were planted on the 20th of February, it's now the 1st of April,and the seed packets say they should be harvested in 65 days or so. I'm looking at these tiny, stunted, sickly looking plants thinking NOPE not a chance. Gives a whole new meaning to 'baby greens'.

Let me describe them to you. The swiss chard is a whole masterful 1 inch high with two leaves, also the stem and the leaves are bright red. Not good.

Now the lettuce has managed to grow to 4 leaves, go lettuce! But considering that two of them yellow and each plant is only 1/2 an inch tall I'm thinking a salad is out of the question at this point.

And the spinach? Umm... well the spinach knows the game is up, the end is nigh, that's all she wrote and the fat lady is going to be singing soon. They have manfully made it to 1 inch tall but most of them are gathering their last feeble efforts and ..... flowering. They know they are doomed and are doing what they can to survive, in their offspring. Bad Urban Trowel. Bad Trowel. Bad Bad Bad.

But I think I know why this disaster has struck. Pretty much everyone on-line has said that you do not need to got to the extra effort and expense of purchasing special grow lights, just use regular ones. When I went and purchased new tubes I got the cool ones as they gave off more 'lumines' or some such, they were brighter and thus better right? So after a month+ under these lights and I knew something wasn't working I read "put one tube of each cool and warm in each fixture to give the full range of light" AH HA!!!! That's why my babies were dying, and face it they are dying, not just sickly. So I have gotten warm tubes to add to the fixtures, maybe I can save the tomatoes that are just starting to sprout, I'm not hanging out hope for the others. We're just going to have to hope the ones in the greenhouse do better.

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Sorry, still no pictures, the camera has disappeared completely, and face it, looking at pictures of these poor, stunted, neglected veggies would be like looking at the scene of an accident. You just can't help but stare, all the time thinking ... OUCH!