Secrets Of Getting Early Harvests Of Vegetables - Winter Sowing

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

How to grow an early harvest of vegetables

In the spring, each gardener counts the days and weeks until the first greens and the first vegetables appear on their site. Every first leaf of onion or dill, the first cucumber seems insanely tasty, fragrant and cannot be compared with imported ones, because your own is always tastier, and there is no need to talk about the usefulness of greens and vegetables grown by your own hands.

• Early potatoes
• Early carrots (parsley, parsnip)

Early potatoes

The growing season of the variety is critical. And if you want to have fresh potatoes in July, then find out all about the planting material. So, the growing season (from planting to harvest) in early ripening varieties from 60 to 70 days; in the mid-early - 70-80, in the mid-ripening - 80-100 and in the mid-late - 100-120 days. You need to choose early-ripening varieties for an early harvest.

Tuber preparation

For planting, you must use large or medium-sized tubers, smaller ones will yield a harvest at a later date. Of course, the tubers must be healthy. Start germinating 30-45 days before planting. Make a circular cut in the middle of the tuber, place the tubers in diffused light, the temperature should be within 17 … 18 ° C. With a circular incision, growth hormone moves throughout the volume of the tuber, and all eyes begin to germinate evenly. But five days before planting, the tubers should be covered with opaque material.

Gardener's guide

Plant nurseries Stores of goods for summer cottages Landscape design studios

You can germinate in another way. Take a small bucket of healthy, smooth, medium-sized potatoes (about 50-60) and place in clean 2-3 liter jars. Place the jars on the edge of the table, close to the window, periodically turning them so that they are illuminated by the sun from all directions. Vernalization lasts 20-25 days, until mid-April. The tubers are reduced in size but produce thick green shoots. Thanks to this preparation, you can enjoy young potatoes already in early July.

Do you want to get potatoes even earlier? To do this, germinate the tubers in a humid environment. With this method, not only shoots are formed on them, but also roots. Seedlings from such plantings appear earlier, and the formation of potato tubers occurs much earlier. Peat, humus, sawdust, etc. can be used as a substrate. A small layer of substrate is poured into boxes, baskets or other containers, the tubers are laid out, covered with substrate again - and so two or three layers. The substrate should be kept moist for 15-20 days, the temperature should not be lower than 15 … 17 ° C. With this method of germination, it is good to moisten the tubers and the substrate with a weak solution of copper sulfate (1-2 g per 1 l of water) for disinfection.

You can also apply a combined method of germination: 25-30 days in the light, and then 7-15 days in a humid environment. Good results are obtained by dusting with wood ash - 1 kg per 50 kg of potatoes.

To get an early harvest, you should select a site that is early free of snow with well-cultivated soil, which is prepared in the fall.

Notice board

Kittens for sale Puppies for sale Horses for sale

Planting tubers

How to navigate the landing dates? Light sprouts tolerate low temperatures well, such plantings always yield a crop earlier than those planted later at least a week and in warmer soil. According to popular beliefs, early potatoes should be planted when buds begin to bloom on birches.

It is important to place the rows correctly. Lack of light leads to stretching of plants, flowering is weak, tubers are formed small. The best option is to place plantings from north-west to south-east. Some gardeners are afraid of planting thickening. But in our case, thickening is one of the conditions that accelerates growth and tuberization. Therefore, early potatoes should be planted much more often than late ones.

Early carrots (parsley, parsnip)

Most gardeners sow dry carrot seeds on the beds, waiting for shoots for a long time - its seeds germinate slowly and often give pampered shoots. The fact is that the roots of the umbrella family (carrots, parsley, parsnips) belong to tightly similar crops, their seeds germinate only on the 15-20th day and grow very slowly. For a month and a half after sowing, seedlings have only 3-4 leaves.

There are various ways to speed up the seed germination process.

Winter sowing of carrots

You can sow carrots before winter - in the first days of stable soil freezing. If everything goes well, you can win two or even three weeks. The fact is that the seeds will swell and germinate as soon as it gets warmer. But this is quite dangerous because if you have chosen the wrong sowing time, the seeds will sprout and germinate in autumn and freeze in winter.

Early spring sowing in the snow with dry seeds

Prepare the seeds at the end of March. Mix 8-10 grams of seeds with 3-4 kilograms of river sand and place in any dish with fine holes (you can use a leaky pan) and, without covering it, put it in the snow. As the snow gradually melts, the seeds will swell, but not germinate, since it is still cold at night. Snow will protect the seeds from frost, and excess water will flow out through the holes in the dishes.

The grooved beds should be prepared in the fall. If the melting of the snow is delayed, sprinkle ashes or cover with foil so that sowing can be done in mid-April. It is necessary to sow seeds with sand, trying to distribute the seeds evenly - here, of course, you need to adapt. Sprinkle them with loose earth and cover them with peat or well-rotted humus on top. The layer above the seeds should not exceed two centimeters.

At the first warming, the seeds sprout quickly and amicably. They germinate already at 2-3 degrees Celsius and easily tolerate frosts at 3-5 degrees. With such an early spring sowing, the effect of early ripening of the crop is the same as with winter sowing, but there are no dangers. The only thing is that more seeds are required, because sowing seeds in this way is difficult to navigate.

Early spring sowing in the soil with germinated seeds

Sowing germinated seeds gives even better results. Seed germination is most reliable in wide, flat containers filled with wet sawdust. A layer of fabric is laid on wet sawdust, and already on it - seeds. From above, the seeds are covered with another layer of fabric, and preferably not one. Such containers are placed in a slightly opened plastic bag. You can, of course, germinate simply in the tissue, but then the seeds dry out faster. Every day, the seeds should be thoroughly washed directly in the fabric by placing them under running water. It's a good idea if the seeds are initially moistened with Epin Growth Promoter.

As soon as the seeds germinate together, you can go to plant. If for some reason this is still impossible to do, it's okay, you just need to place the containers with seeds on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator right in a plastic bag (the bag should have a small hole). It is rather difficult to plant sprouted seeds by hand, therefore, sowing seeds using a liquid paste solution has been invented for a long time. Everything is very simple. Remember how you usually cook jelly, only you will have to cook a lot of it - I cook a whole bucket. Attention! The kissel should be very liquid and flow easily.

After the jelly has cooled, you can start planting. Pre-make holes throughout the area where you plan to place the carrots. Then carefully put all the seeds in a bucket of jelly, take a stick for stirring the contents of the bucket and a regular glass as a tool, and then go to the garden. Stir your jelly thoroughly, quickly fill a glass with it and pour the contents of the glass into the hole, very quickly moving the glass along it. It all depends on the skill: you should move your hand extremely quickly during pouring, otherwise the seeds will be sown too thickly.