Our heroine seems to have trouble growing tomato plants. They turn out all tall and spindly when she starts them indoors and then when she plants them they fall over as soon as the wind blows! What to do ... what to do ...
Here's my answer:
Plants grow tall and spindly like that because they're trying to get above what they perceive is the ground cover. They aren't getting enough light, so they think it's because other plants are shading them out, so put all their growth into their stems to try and get some leaves up above the crowd.
Tomato plants are somewhat wondrous in that they will grow a root system from anywhere along their stem. When it comes time to planting them, plant them very, very deep with only maybe 3-5 inches sticking up above the soil. Just make sure there's some leaves up where they'll catch the light when you move them outside. The whole spindly "stem" will become a root system and while you've lost some height the plant will be that much stronger for it.
You may also want to get better lights. You can take one of those two bulb flourescent systems and put one of the regular bulbs in and then one of the "soft" bulbs in. Between the two they supposedly put out a full light spectrum that plants like. It's no substitute for sun and I've never had my plants on them like that for more than 4 weeks, but it seems to work fine.
