Growing Tomato Seedlings In "diapers", Forming A Bush

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

Experience in growing tomatoes near St. Petersburg

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.

Growing tomato seedlings in a greenhouse with late sowing

Talking about the time of sowing tomatoes, I named two terms. But I use one more. I sow only determinant varieties or hybrids in the apartment on April 2-6. I do little seedlings, I grow them according to all the rules, trying not to forget about hardening.

In the phase of the second true leaf, and sometimes, it happens, even the third leaf will appear, in small boxes I take it to the site. The greenhouse is already ready by the end of April. In a cucumber greenhouse, biofuel (I have hay) will "flare up", heating the soil to + 16 ° C, dive tomato seedlings there. The soil is filled with superphosphate and azophos at the rate. There is a lot of light in the greenhouse, I air it during the day, the slurry wanders. The seedlings develop very quickly.

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In 2002, she sowed seeds on April 2, sowed the seedlings on April 28 to the greenhouse, and by May 20, all the seedlings were with buds and ready for planting. Used varieties Golubka, Garant, Beta, Boni-M, I-3, Snowdrop and hybrid Semko-98. It took 45 days for the seedlings to develop. I fed him once with slurry and once with full mineral fertilizer with microelements. Day and night she was covered with lutrasil. I plant part of such seedlings in a tomato greenhouse in a permanent place, grow some there, and after June 10 (the end of return frosts) I plant them in open ground with flowers and even fruits.

Separately, I will tell you about growing seedlings in "diapers". Practical gardener V. N. For many years Kovaleva has been using "diapers" not only for obtaining tomato seedlings. She does well with cucumbers, peppers, and cabbage. We take a rectangle made of plastic wrap, 8-10 cm wide, 12-15 cm long.

Pour 1 tablespoon of moist soil onto it, then set the tomato seedling so that the leaves are visible from the film. Then put another 1 tablespoon of soil on the seedling and wrap it with a roll with it. This will be a dive into the "diaper". The edges of the roll must be fixed with any available material so that it does not unfold. Watering and feeding is carried out as usual. I made control observations comparing all cultivation methods. I came to the following conclusions: tomato seedlings in a "diaper" should not be "overgrown", a good period is 40-45 days.

Determinant varieties and hybrids are excellent, but for indeterminate hybrids this method is not entirely suitable, because in their "diapers" there is a disturbance in the formation of the hands. If the Typhoon F1 hybrid has a brush that is always even, each fruit is in its place, then the brush can branch out of the "diaper"; two or three ramifications are obtained. But the harvest from the "diaper" still turns out to be good, and even such seedlings are easy to take to the site, and at home they take up little space, little soil is required. This method is very suitable for the elderly.

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I would like to draw your attention to the fact that when preparing seedlings for moving to the dacha, I spray them with the homeopathic remedy "Healthy Garden" according to the attached instructions. It is good against stress. If you have to cut the seedlings for reproduction, then before this procedure I also process it with the same agent. And also, if, after prolonged cold snaps, heat suddenly sets in, treatment with such a drug helps the plants to endure temperature jumps.

Soil preparation in a greenhouse, greenhouses in autumn and spring

In the fall, when the tomato crop is harvested, and this happens at the end of September or in the first days of October, I cut out the plants "at the root", in no case pull them out, and put them in compost. During the growing season, stepchildren and cut leaves are also put in compost. I do not remove the film from the roof, tk. we do the processing of the greenhouse with sulfur sticks according to the instructions. Instead of sulfur, you can use bleach (400 g per 10 liters of water) and spray the soil, all overlaps and the film with a sprayer.

While the greenhouse is ventilated for several days, the topsoil dries up and is then easy to take out. I remove the roots - and into the compost. We remove 5-10 cm of soil and take it out to the beds or under the bushes. We bring to the tomato greenhouse from cucumber, also treated with sulfur, as much soil as we have taken out.

In a cucumber greenhouse, I renew the soil every year, stuffing the ridge with hay, and pour a three-year compost on top with a layer of 15 cm. Over the summer in a cucumber greenhouse, the hay burns out, making a good soil for tomatoes. Some gardeners simply swap plantings. Where cucumbers grew, tomatoes are planted a year later, and vice versa. I do not do this. Diseases in the soil persist for several years, so if you plant seedlings in the soil where the tomatoes grew in a year, you can get an outbreak of infection.

I often see the following picture: tomato plants are fat, thick, leaves have filled the entire greenhouse or greenhouse, and the ovaries fall off, and the fruits are small. The reason is simple - last season cucumbers grew here on manure, and tomatoes were planted on this humus. The plants were fattened. In a greenhouse with a height of three meters on such soil, you can get a good harvest, but with strong ventilation and very rare planting of seedlings, planting almost half as often as according to the standard.

But back to the autumn soil preparation in a tomato greenhouse. Having filled up the soil taken from the cucumber beds, I dig everything up. I do not apply any fertilizers in the fall, because I have very close groundwater (1.5 bayonet shovels), and in the spring everything is washed out. I do not put biofuel under the tomatoes in the greenhouse.

In greenhouses where tomatoes will grow under temporary shelter, it is better to make a warm ridge in the fall. You can use plant residues (stems of flowers, Jerusalem artichoke), dry hay, reeds, leaves of trees, shrubs. If the groundwater is deep in the area, then in the fall you can add superphosphate. Check acidity. It is necessary to deoxidize the soil with lime in the fall, and dolomite flour or ash - better in the spring.

There is another option for growing tomatoes in a low greenhouse, where the tomatoes will be covered during cold snaps. The predecessor there were cucumbers on manure. So you planted on humus. In this case, it is necessary to ventilate the greenhouse as often as possible, open it very early in the morning so that the plants do not overheat and do not thicken the plantings. Be sure to put a thermometer near the plants. I even have three thermometers - one in the soil, one in the soil, and the third under the roof of the greenhouse.

In the spring, in a greenhouse or greenhouse, I scatter superphosphate and azophoska along the entire ridge at the rate. It is necessary to add dolomite flour or ash in the spring, this will show you the acidity of the soil. I dug up the bed, level it with a rake and cover it with old films so that the soil does not dry out. So it will warm up faster, despite the fact that the greenhouse or greenhouse is already closed (glass, film). After that, the soil warms up for 6-7 days, the temperature at a depth of 15-17 cm reaches a stable temperature of 14-16 ° C, which means that you can already plant seedlings.

Before planting seedlings, it is recommended to shed the entire ridge so that the plants take root more easily. But in our area, at the end of April - beginning of May, ice still lies in the well, i.e. there is little water and it needs to be heated. Therefore, I get by with watering in the holes. I will spill them well, then pour each well with warm potassium permanganate (not a very weak solution, but not black), then again with water - and begin to plant seedlings.

In the open ground (without any shelter), I act differently. I make a hole 30x30 cm, because the root system is very ramified. I pour half a tablespoon of superphosphate and azophoska into the hole, a handful of ash, mix everything thoroughly. I dig up a plant in a greenhouse with a pitchfork, carry it with a lump of earth on a pitchfork, put it in a hole with earth and pour water again.

Sometimes I pour 5-6 liters on one plant. I sprinkle it with dry soil again and do nothing more for the whole season, except for pinching, shaping and loosening after rain. Why don't I feed more? Because in the open ground, plants require 3-4 times less nutrition than in closed ground.

I tested this option for several years. If she began to feed and water, then the plants turned out to be powerful, the fruits are large, but by mid-August they did not have time to turn red, but began to turn black. Tomatoes will find moisture on their own even in a very hot summer, and strong dews begin from the beginning of July. In our area near Vyborg, the summer is short, so only with this approach can you get red fruits in the open field without any shelter.

Planting methods for tomatoes

Figure: one

There are as many of them as there are gardeners. Tomatoes are such a plastic culture that no matter how a gardener plants it, it will still take root. A stepson thrown to the ground, not dug in, will take root in a few days. And all the "horror stories" written about how you can bury seedlings, how much soil you need to add, about the orientation of the plant to the south - they didn't scare me.

I just don't obey them. When she lived in Rostov-on-Don, she received red fruits until late autumn, while spilling the plants before the beginning of fruiting (dry watering), when forming, she removed all the stepchildren to the first flower brush, did not touch the rest, did not regulate the number of fruits on the brush. Everything was ripening.

The Northwest has a completely different climate. I quickly determined the timing of disembarkation at a permanent place by observing the weather from February to May inclusive. As soon as the soil in the greenhouse has warmed up to a depth of 15-20 cm to + 14 … + 16 ° C, it is time to plant. But on the methods of planting it took more than one year to work, i.e. calculate, observe, do accurate control weighing.

Figure: 2

With the standard varieties Moskvich, Nevsky, Betta, Boni-M, everything is clear. Their seedlings do not stretch, they grow short, stocky, and when planting in the ground, the plants do not need to be buried or laid. Most often, such varieties are grown by elderly gardeners in small greenhouses so as not to pinch. It is better to give the distance 30x50 cm, but if the greenhouse is filled with organic matter, then the distance is needed 50x50 cm.

I cultivated the Nevsky variety for several years in a greenhouse to get early production. I went through a lot of newfangled varieties, but before Nevsky, none of them blushed. To get early red tomatoes from him (by July 1-7), I removed all the stepsons, i.e. grown in one shoot (see Fig. 1), even formed a brush. She left no more than five fruit set in it. They turned out not small, they blushed quickly. By the end of July-beginning of August, the plant was finishing fruiting, and I cut it out. From one bush, at least 1 kg of red fruits was obtained. The distance between such tomatoes is 25 cm, or even 20 cm.

Five years ago, Betta and Boni-M replaced the Nevsky variety. They take up even less space than Nevsky, so I use Betta and Boni-M, I form it in the same way, only I leave a distance of 20 cm. They also give at least 1 kg per plant. If such tomatoes are not formed (see Fig. 2), then the yield from each of them will be higher, but fruiting will stretch until late autumn, the fruits will be small, and the distance in the greenhouse will have to be 50x50 cm, so there will be only four plants.

Figure: 3

Determinant varieties and hybrids (medium-sized) form 4-6 inflorescences on the main shoot and are crowded themselves, i.e. stop growing. Here are some of them: Morning, Early-83, Agata, Zarevo, Garant, Dana, White filling, Tsarskoye Selo, Raketa, Novinka Pridnestrovie, I-3, Verlioka F1, Blagovest F1, Semko-98 F1, Semko-101 F1, Volzhsky F1, Semko-99 F1, etc. They lay the first flower cluster after the sixth leaf.

Semi-determinant varieties and hybrids (tall) form 6-8 inflorescences on the main shoot and also bend themselves. Popular amateur varieties Ogorodnik, Alpha, Persimmon, Cosmonaut Volkov, Bull's Heart, and from hybrids - Gamayun F1, Kostroma F1, Margarita F1, etc. I would add the F1 Master to this group. I always do it after the sixth inflorescence, but this is a powerful, strong plant, more productive than determinant. The first flower cluster is laid after 7-8 leaves.

Indeterminate varieties and hybrids (liana-like) do not stop their growth by themselves. These are the well-known varieties of De Barao, Anna German. And there are a lot of hybrids of this type. I have been using Typhoon F1, Stresa F1, Samara F1, Vitador F1, Overture F1, Flagship F1, Etude F1, Castalia F1, Favorite F1 for several years now. They are high yielding disease resistant plants that set well in any weather. The first inflorescence is laid after 9-11 leaves.

Figure: 4

I want to emphasize that determinant plants, when properly grown seedlings, should bloom after the sixth leaf. Since the illumination in my apartment is weak, normal seedlings do not work, and they will not bloom after the sixth leaf. The situation is the same with indeterminate tomatoes. And if I plant such plants in the greenhouse without deepening, then the first brush for determinant varieties will be at a height of 70-90 cm from the ground, and for indeterminate ones - up to a meter and more. The trellis is in my greenhouse at a height of 1.5 m. We push the indeterminate tomatoes above the trellis, which means that they will take only 3-4 brushes and … the end (Fig. 3).

The best way to plant determinate (medium-sized) tomatoes in the ground is to plant a plant in a hole with a large clod of earth when buried a maximum of one leaf, and even better when you do not have to burrow. But such seedlings should be grown in a separate pot with a capacity of at least one and a half liters. In good light it is low, has large beautiful leaves (see Fig. 4).

Our practitioners have a lot of experience in growing indeterminate tomatoes in short summers. To get a full harvest, you need an overgrown seedling. So, in 1992, in the brochure A. M. Mazenkov described his experience. He made an adaptation to the pots, as a result, as it were, pushes them higher and higher as the seedlings grow (see Fig. 5).

Figure: five

In this glass device, he poured soil. New roots grew on the stem, and the seedlings did not seem elongated, i.e. he augmented the root system at home, had a "race" per month due to this. He even has an inventor's certificate for this method.

Such seedlings should be planted in the ground in a horizontal position. Not a hole is made, but a groove to a depth of no more than 15-17 cm, the root system fits into it, it must be sprinkled with a not very thick layer of soil, above which there will be a plant top of 2-4 leaves (see Fig. 6). This method is justified by the fact that the root system is formed, and the plant continues to grow without stopping.

There is another way to plant overgrown seedlings. In indeterminate varieties, it already has 8-9 leaves. 4-5 lower leaves are removed, grooves are made again and the stem (it is without roots) is laid horizontally, leaving 3-4 leaves on the surface. But in this case, the plant will not grow for a long time, because it will take 10 or even 15 days to form new roots. It depends on the temperature of the soil. So, with this method of planting, we lose precious days. Most gardeners use it though.

Read the third part: Planting tomatoes in a greenhouse →

Every year with red tomatoes:

• Part 1: Preparing and sowing tomato seeds, growing seedlings
• Part 2: Growing tomato seedlings in "diapers", forming a bush
• Part 3: Planting tomatoes in a greenhouse
• Part 4: Features of the formation of determinant and indeterminate varieties of tomatoes
• Part 5: Prevention of tomato diseases, harvesting and storage of crops