Soil And Seed Preparation, Growing Tomato Seedlings

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

Timing of sowing tomato seeds

Seedlings when planted in a permanent place should be with buds. Such seedlings easily take root, and the result is the highest yield. On average, it takes 50-70 days to receive these seedlings. Therefore, there is no need to rush to sowing.

Experienced gardeners know that plants of the same varieties develop faster with later crops and catch up with plants planted earlier, because they find themselves in more favorable conditions for development. They are warmer and more light. Plants turn out to be more robust, the period from sowing to flowering is shorter.

Gardener's guide

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When choosing a sowing date, one must take into account the early maturity of the variety. First of all, late-ripening varieties like De Barao need to be sown. Experts recommend the sowing date for such varieties - mid-March - this is for our region. My experience has set the sowing date between 10 and 15 March. By the time of planting, strong flowering plants grow. Modern ultra-early ripening varieties like Boni M can be sown a month later - April 10-15. For the rest of the varieties, the average between these two dates remains, usually this is the second half of March.

Preparing soil and tomato seeds for sowing

I use a mixture of soil from my garden with a commercially available micro-greenhouse in a ratio of about 1: 1. I add a tablespoon of dolomite flour per 5 liters of soil to the mixture, just to be on the acidic case. I do all this two weeks, and preferably a month before planting, so that the mixture is ripe. Everything harmful during this time will disappear, everything that has not rotted will decompose, the deoxidation process will give the desired effect.

Before sowing, I pickle purchased seeds in a 1% solution of potassium permanganate (1 g per half a glass of water), my own - no. I do not process any microelements, I believe that nature took care of everything itself. Then I put the seeds in a Petri dish for germination. At the bottom of this cup (you can use an ordinary saucer) I put a boiled cloth, moisten it with a piece of clean ice from the refrigerator, and lay out the seeds. They should not be covered with water. Next to the side of the cup I stick pieces of paper with the names of the varieties.

I close the cup, and if it is a saucer, then I put it in a plastic bag so that there is a layer of air above the surface of the seeds - it is necessary for the seeds to breathe. I put it in a warm place, where the temperature is 24 - 25 degrees, no more and no less. As a last resort, "less" is better. I usually find such a place on a steam heating battery. A thermometer for measuring temperature is required, so as not to guess why these seeds do not germinate for a long time.

After a few days, they hatch, i.e. they have a white root. First of all, fresh seeds of early varieties hatch. Those that have been stored incorrectly for a long time come up last.

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Planting tomato seeds

I plant the hatched seeds in vessels with soil with a layer thickness of 5 cm. The planting depth is 1 cm. This is enough for the sprout, making its way through the ground, to drop the "cap". I cover the crops with glass or foil. The temperature at which I keep the crops is 20 - 22 ° C degrees.

At a higher temperature, the sprout can "jump out" of the ground too quickly, without having time to throw off this "cap", and then there will be a lot of fuss with its removal. And the plant will have time to stretch out on the very first night. As soon as the first shoots loops appear, I remove the shelter. During this period, it is very important to reduce the night temperature to 10 - 14 ° С - by 4 - 5 nights. In practice, for this you need to put the seedlings on the windowsill, cover them with a film from drafts and open the window. The window sill can be separated from the room by covering the window with a thick curtain or plastic wrap.

At the stage of the first - second true leaf, plants need to dive, deepening them almost to the very cotyledons. In recent years, in order not to bother with this, I plant each seed that hatches immediately in my little pot: I use either ready-made cassettes that are on sale, or I make glasses with a diameter of 2.5 - 3 cm from a newspaper, fill them with soil 3/4 of the height of the glass and install in dairy bags. In the future, as the seedlings grow, I pour the soil into the cups to the very top and place the cups less often in new bags so that the plants do not shade each other.

Care of tomato seedlings

Tomato seedlings require a lot of light to grow - 14-16 hours a day. With its lack, you have to use additional lighting, otherwise the seedlings will stretch out. A simple 40-watt fluorescent lamp is usually sufficient. If the seedlings grow on the windowsill and reach for the glass, hang a strip of white cloth or paper behind it, from the side of the room. Then it will grow up.

Correspondence between temperature and light is very important. Seedlings grow at any room temperature, and the higher the temperature, the faster. The best temperature is 20-25 ° С during the day, and 5-7 degrees lower at night. At 10 ° C, plant growth stops. At soil temperatures below 16 ° C, root growth is delayed and phosphorus absorption stops, the leaves acquire a lilac hue, which is often observed by many gardeners, whose seedlings grow on cold windowsills.

Watering is important: plants cannot be flooded. Watering should be done rarely, when the soil dries up, and the plant is about to wither, but not yet wither, and only with warm water, warmer than the air in the room. On the other hand, if there is insufficient watering, the roots may suffer. This will reduce growth and yield. You need to find a middle ground, to feel it. Seedlings grown with frequent watering, and even with an excess of nitrogen, turns out to be pampered, it does not take root well with further planting in the ground.

Growing tomato seedlings

Top dressing is very important for her. The first must be done during the appearance of real leaves, when the plant runs out of nutrients in the seed, and it switches to independent nutrition. Then feed every 10-14 days. Take fertilizer concentrations according to the instructions for them.

However, it is better to feed more often, at the same time as watering, adding very small amounts of nutrients to the water with each watering. A good result is obtained when adding a few drops of "Ideal" to 1 liter of water (from one drop for tiny seedlings to 5-6 drops for older plants) or another complete mineral fertilizer.

Actually, if the soil is fertile and the seedlings are doing well, then they can be grown without top dressing.

Development of tomato seedlings

As the research of scientists has shown, when two real leaves grow in a seedling, the laying of a future inflorescence begins in it. Under the microscope, it looks like a tiny bump at the point of growth. If at this time there is little light, then instead of an inflorescence at the point of growth, leaves will continue to grow. As a result, we get overgrown seedlings. For this reason, one should not rush to sow seeds, do not sow them in February. Better to wait for real spring to come and the days are long and bright. Then a little artificial lighting is enough. Usually you have to light up the seedlings until mid-April.

If you nevertheless hurried with sowing, fed well and highlighted the seedlings, then it will bloom long before the time when it can be planted in the ground. While waiting for the transplant, she will only have enough strength to feed her modest offspring. These are usually one or two small tomatoes. And until these one or two fruits ripen, the bush will not grow further. Therefore, before planting the plant in the ground, these fruits must be removed.

As the seedlings grow, they spread their leaves wide to capture more light. They must be constantly spaced away from each other so that they do not shade each other and do not stretch out.

Choosing a place for tomatoes

The place for growing this crop should be as sunny as possible during the day. Its morning rays are especially appreciated. Tomatoes are very light-requiring, so they need to create conditions with maximum illumination. To do this, all internal parts of the greenhouse must be painted white, and it is useful to hang the northern end of the greenhouse with a white cloth both to increase illumination and for warmth with northern winds. Ridges and greenhouses should be located in the north-south direction so that the plants are illuminated by the sun during the day from all sides.

When choosing a place, one small nuance must be taken into account: the most useful tomatoes with the highest amount of lycopene grow in open ground, under the influence of sunlight. For the same reason, it is preferable to choose film greenhouses, rather than glazed ones, which completely block ultraviolet rays.

For ridges in open ground, you need to choose the most windless and warmest place on the site, preferably with a slope to the south or southeast. If the site is located on level ground, then it is advisable to choose a place with natural or specially created protection from the prevailing spring winds (high fence, dense bushes). It is undesirable to be close to the site where potatoes grow, since the diseases and pests of these crops are practically the same. Good predecessors of tomato are pumpkin crops, onions, carrots, legumes, cabbage, bad ones are tomato, pepper, potatoes. It is also important to consider that you will not get a good harvest of tomatoes in an area with a close standing of groundwater.

Tomatoes grow well on soils of various textures and fertility with an acidity of 5.5 - 6.5. However, the best soils are loose fertile, moisture and air-consuming. To protect plants from diseases, and the soil from exhaustion, tomatoes are planted in the open field in their original place only after 3-4 years. In the greenhouse, the topsoil is usually changed.

Preparing the soil for planting tomatoes

The root of a tomato bush is able to extract water from the deep layers of the soil, penetrating to a depth of 2 m and to the sides - more than 1.5 m. However, the bulk of the roots is located at a depth of 25-30 cm, so it is enough to dig a bed to this depth. A week before planting, you can shed the soil with a solution of copper sulfate - 1 tbsp. spoon on a bucket of water. This event is especially important on peat soils, poor in copper. The soil, the fertility of which is not very high, must be fertilized: add a bucket of well-rotted humus, 15-20 g of potash fertilizers, 20-30 g of ammonium nitrate, 50-60 g of double superphosphate - all this per square meter of area. An increased dose of superphosphate is very important here.

A small amount of organic matter and nitrogen fertilization is also very important. It is categorically impossible to bring manure under the digging. In this case, the plants will fatten, i.e. they will grow powerful greens, but they will bloom late and set fruit late.

Lovers of early harvests grow tomatoes in biofuel beds. Anyone who has manure uses it as biofuel. If there is no manure, then hay can be used as biofuel. For example, in the summer, prepare hay by rolling it into rollers with a diameter of 30-40 cm and a length of 60 cm. In winter, the rollers can be stored in a barn, hanging them from the ceiling, so that mice do not start. In the spring, you need to lay them out tightly to each other in the center of the ridges, across. Drizzle with hot water. Then put a little manure on top or pour it with slurry - after all, you can't do without manure here - and immediately cover it with a layer of fertile soil 20-30 cm. Cover everything with foil. This must be done two weeks before planting seedlings in the ground, so that the biofuel begins to "burn" and generate heat.