How To Get High Yields Of Vegetables Despite Bad Weather, Northern Agricultural Technology

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Three in one team

We named this article that way because we believe that in addition to the two of us, there is also a third assistant. This is our land.

She is a living organism for us, and we treat her as a native member of our family. For twenty years of work on the earth, we felt for the first time the power of the fertile field created by our hands.

In the past unpredictable and exhausting summer, our land thanked us for taking care of it with an unprecedented harvest of most crops.

The end of April and the beginning of May were common last year. By this time, we already had excellent seedlings of all crops ready. In April, the husband already lived on the site and tried to harden the seedlings well before planting them in the ground. All plants after home growing conditions, having been in the bright sun and in the fresh air, looked great - even send them to the exhibition.

For the first time in recent years, tomato seedlings did not outgrow and had a normal, healthy appearance. However, the weather conditions in May were by no means favorable. May was sunny with strong winds, and there were no long-awaited rains driving the icy cold out of the earth. Given this, I had to tinker with the beds for planting heat-loving crops. We prepared them more thoroughly than usual. Compared to previous years, for melons and watermelons in the open field, the ridges were made higher (by 30-40 cm) and more warmly stuffed. We have repeatedly described the production of warm beds in the magazine (see "Flora Price" No. 12 (2006) and No. 1 (2007)).

This year, we have also reduced the load on the planting area, i.e. the number of plants per square meter. For example, on a watermelon melon on an area of 1.5 m? planted 2-3 plants. The beds were made with a slope to the south, resulting in a construction in the form of a children's slide. There were five such "slides" on the site. Seedlings of watermelons were planted under temporary film shelters, which we removed on June 12. After this date, watermelon melons were no longer covered.

Not all varieties of watermelons gave their due return last summer. Watermelons of the Podarok Severa variety turned out to be the best. One melon of two plants gave 14 fruits in the open field. Of these, five watermelons weighed from 7 to 10 kg, the rest pulled from 3 to 6 kg.

The first ovary of watermelons on the melon was powerful, all the fruits that set ripened by the end of the season. The peculiarity of this year is that there was no second layer of watermelon ovary on the melon. In the previous three years, she always had two layers of ovary.

The main harvest of watermelons at the site was on September 5, in the presence of many representatives of print media and television. The Kai hybrid pleased us with the harvest - they removed five watermelons, 9 kg each. The record weight for its variety in the open field was gained by a watermelon of the Suga Baby variety - 7 kilograms! This is how the land thanked us for taking care of it on the melons.

In the open field on a ridge with an area of 2.8 m? (its design is similar to the one for watermelon melon) five melon plants were planted. On the street, the main melon harvest was taken on September 2. Many melons were already overripe and bursting. A total of 35 melons were removed, weighing from half a kilogram to one and a half kilograms.

Feature of this year: melons grew small, but they tasted sweeter than melons grown in a greenhouse. We talked about the design of the ridges and the method of filling them with melons and gourds in the magazine more than once (see "Flora Price" No. 12 (2006)).

Now, what kind of harvest was obtained in our complex greenhouse with an area of 73.5 m2. In the past unfavorable summer season for many, despite the whims of the weather, rains and bad weather, she gave birth to such an unprecedented harvest. which we ourselves did not expect. The spouse managed, using various techniques and methods, to warm up the ground in the greenhouse beds by the end of May and keep this warmth in them throughout the summer. All seedlings in the greenhouse at the end of May looked like the picture, and the first peppers were already hanging on the sweet pepper plants. All plants quickly took root in the warm earth and, what is most interesting, this season they immediately entered the rhythm of the lunar calendar. We have already told the readers of the magazine about the design of our volumetric greenhouse and the peculiarities of caring for plants in it (see "Flora Price" №№ 1-3 (2008)).

But all our efforts were almost canceled out by the stormy weather unprecedented for summer. On July 9, the greenhouse was bursting at the seams. For a week after this storm, I had to do minor repairs to the seams. The spouse learned a lesson for himself: for the next seasons, he will fasten the film canvases more carefully.

Fruiting of tomatoes in the greenhouse began in mid-July. And until the end of September, late varieties of tomatoes grew and ripened in the greenhouse. All this is due to the fact that we had high ridges and drainage was laid across the entire site. Long-term fruiting provides us with record yields from a bush. The maximum saturation of greenhouse tomatoes was in mid-August.

In addition to tomatoes, two watermelon plants were planted in the greenhouse. One of them - the Lezhebok variety - gave two fruits weighing 12.5 kg and 8 kg, the other - one watermelon weighing 13.5 kg. They started at the beginning of the second decade of June, we took them off the lashes on September 5.

The melons in the greenhouse gave a rich harvest. But the first push in fruit set had to be done within ten days using hand pollination in the morning. The Cinderella hybrid was very good that season. We removed two layers of melons from one bush: the first layer - five large melons weighing from 2.5 to 3 kg, the second layer - 4 melons weighing from 1 to 1.5 kg.

All varieties of melons that we have planted have produced fruits with impeccable taste. However, you need to know one feature: in no case should you overexpose ripe melons on the bushes. Otherwise, they lose taste, sugar content and become flabby, as if cottony. Guessing the ripeness and readiness of melons for picking up is a great art, mastering it comes with experience.

Our greenhouse looked unusually beautiful when sweet peppers began to ripen on the bushes: red, green, yellow, orange, purple. We have collected its fruits twice. The harvest of this culture was stable, as we have it every year, but the quality of the fruits was higher now, and outwardly they were very beautiful.

And the eggplants in the past season were especially pleased. We have not yet reaped such a crop, they simply amazed us with an abundance of fruits on the bushes. The eggplants were ripe until the end of September, and there was some kind of blue-black background from their fruits in the greenhouse.

There was also a place in it for one bush of bitter pepper. He was, like Christmas decorations, hung with fruits. The only cucumber bush here bore fruit well in this greenhouse.

For the third year already, we have combined the cultivation of crops of different nature in one large greenhouse and have always collected a consistently rich harvest. And in the past season, he turned out to be a record in general. Numerous guests who visited our site could be convinced of this. The whole secret of such success in a greenhouse, moreover, in a difficult year for weather conditions, when many gardeners received very modest yields of most crops, in our opinion, lies in three factors: in good ventilation of the greenhouse, in high nutrient beds and in watering plants with warm water.

We also got a good harvest of vegetables in the open field. A very high result has been achieved for the second year in a row on mini-beds with cucumbers. This culture grows in the conditions that are provided by such a bed (for my husband's designs - see "Flora Price" # 6 (2008)). They bore fruit steadily last summer. Moreover, we began to harvest the crop very early - in mid-June. And at the end of September we were still picking cucumbers from these beds. Hybrids of cucumbers Gusarsky F1, Alliance F1, Okropus F1, Colet F1 and Santana F1 grew on them.

They started bearing fruit early and delighted us with their fruits and the marrows Milet F1, Kavili F1, Leila F1. From three bushes of zucchini we took a huge harvest of their fruits. And one bush of squash Umbrella gave us 14 fruits.

We were also very pleased with the beds with beets, carrots and onions: we took an excellent harvest from them.

Pumpkins this year were born both large-fruited and portioned. The largest large-fruited Big Moon pumpkin gained 50 kilograms! Every year we grow winter sweet pumpkin. This year, two pumpkins weighing 7 and 9 kg were received from the bush. And the portioned pumpkin of the Hazelnut variety is a long-leaved plant, it managed to tie and grow nine pumpkins last season, about one and a half kilograms each.

And the best in the open field last season was the leek - it was tall, bright, juicy in color and formed thick strong legs. The harvest was such that it was enough for us, and for the guests.

But the potato crop that year did not please us very much - it turned out to be average. True, we should only blame ourselves here. We decided to experiment - we planted ten varieties of tubers. But they could not provide proper care for the plantings - employment in the melon beds and in the greenhouse prevented. We didn’t even have time to huddle the plantings at least once. But our fertile land helped out here too - tubers of all varieties were large, there were no small ones at all, all were clean, even, without flaws. But now, when using potatoes for food, we realized that some varieties still suffered from excess rainfall. We find small brown spots in their tubers, which means that they have suffered from the most harmful potato disease - late blight. But the taste of our potatoes, as always, is excellent, and we will still give it a place on our site.

Maybe some readers, after reading this story about our work at our site in the past difficult year, will say that, they say, everything is like a fairy tale. But at what cost was this fairy tale created? It was created by a huge long-term work that was invested in our land. We have created such a soil for all plants that provides them with nutrition, stimulates their growth, development, fruiting, gives them endurance to the vagaries of the weather. The land plus our daily work and accumulated experience - all this together gave such a harvest in the past rotten summer.

And most of all, we are glad that we are already completing the development of 16 acres of land, and soon there will be fertile productive land on our entire site.

Remembering all 22 years of our work on the site, we realize that there is little literature that would teach competent work with the land. How many mistakes, unnecessary and unnecessary things we had to make when developing the site. Literature that gives the necessary and useful knowledge should be in every gardener and gardener, it will facilitate their path to a big harvest.