Greenhouse Soil Preparation For Pepper Seedlings

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

Read the previous part. ← Planting pepper seedlings in the ground and frost protection

There is no vegetable garden without peppers. Part 4

Late (April) sowing of pepper for seedlings

For those gardeners, for whom the delivery of "overgrown" seedlings to the site is a problem, the late (April) sowing of pepper for seedlings can be recommended.

In early April, seeds are sown in a container (for a school). The emerging seedlings in this container are taken to the site and already there they dive into 0.2-liter cups. During the day, seedlings are kept in a greenhouse - there is enough sun and warmth, at night - in a house. After the eighth leaf, the plants form buds. Seedlings are planted in a permanent place in a greenhouse in early June. These plants are planted more often, as they grow strongly, they will not have time to branch out.

Gardener's handbook

Plant nurseries Stores of goods for summer cottages Landscape design studios

For late sowing, it is better to use pepper varieties, the fruits of which, in technical ripeness, have a light green, salad, cream or yellow color: Dobrynya Nikitich, Tenderness, Health, Kapitoshka, Krepysh, Jubilee Semko F1, Ivolga, Swallow, Winnie the Pooh, Alyosha Popovich, Funtik, etc. But for early, February or March sowing, it is better to use varieties in which the fruits are colored in red, yellow, orange and purple only in biological ripeness, and in technical they are dark green

Where peppers grow and bear fruit better

The best option is when a separate greenhouse is made for the peppers. But most gardeners do not have such conditions. Therefore, the peppers are planted in all directions. For years I checked: where is it better for them? I wanted to get not just some peppers, but thick peppers to turn red and yellow "on the vine." In biology, at first glance, they should sit with nightshades, i.e. with tomatoes. But in the first year, the desire to grow peppers with tomatoes fell away. They grew thin-walled.

We made a separate greenhouse for the peppers - it turned out well, but still not what we wanted. On the Karelian Isthmus, where our summer cottage, strong winds, the greenhouse had to be opened only from above and only until 12 noon. Then a strong wind rose, and often with rain, the peppers didn't really like it, they had to close the greenhouse. Every now and then opening and closing is too troublesome, laborious.

Notice board

Sale of kittens Sale of puppies Sale of horses

I tried to plant peppers, in spite of all sciences, in a cucumber greenhouse. I planted it immediately at the entrance to the ridge of 0.5 m² on one side of the door and on the same ridge on the other side. Good peppers have grown. In the second year, I planted them on a garden bed of 2 m² and around the perimeter around cucumbers as seals. It turned out very well. The pepper greenhouse was broken.

In his lecture, 15 years ago, Sh. G. Bekseev suggested: "In the Leningrad region, peppers will bear fruit on a warm ridge." I grow cucumbers on biofuel - here is a ready-made warm ridge for peppers. Then she listened attentively to the lecture on the Tenderness pepper of the candidate of agricultural sciences M. V. Voronina. This variety was bred at the V. I. N. I. Vavilov, zoned since 1986.

Until now, gardeners of the Leningrad Region put the Tenderness variety in first place in their assortment. I myself, when I begin to draw up a plan for sowing peppers, first of all I take a package of seeds of this variety and plan where to plant it. I have favorite Dutch hybrids, but Tenderness is a variety, it will never let you down, in any summer.

At a lecture by M. V. Voronina, one phrase: "Peppers eat and drink more than cucumbers" was enough for me to understand: I am on the right track, I have chosen the right place for pepper - a greenhouse where cucumbers grow. I feed the cucumbers with mineral water or slurry - I give the same to peppers.

Soil preparation in the greenhouse and greenhouses for planting seedlings

In a greenhouse (my height is 2 m, a ridge is 2.8 m) or greenhouses, peppers can grow and give a full harvest in the North-West region only on biofuel or when the soil is heated (with electricity, a stove). Biofuels can be manure, hay, straw cutting, and chopped reeds. The ridge trench is made at least 40 cm deep.

Here are some of the simplest options for filling the ridge:

1. Very close to groundwater. Pour a layer of 5-10 cm of wood waste (sawdust, shavings, bark) at the bottom of the ridge. Sprinkle them with nitrogen fertilizers (urea, ammonium nitrate) 3-4 large handfuls per 1 m². It is better to dissolve these fertilizers and pour in a hot solution. Pour a layer of manure, about 15 cm, on the wood waste, cover the manure with a layer of soil 20 cm.

2. Very close to groundwater. As in the first case, pour a layer of 5-10 cm of wood waste on the bottom of the ridge, sprinkle them with nitrogen fertilizers - 2-4 large handfuls per 1m². Spread a layer of hay, or straw, or reeds on top. The length of straw and reed is no more than 50 cm, i.e. they need to be cut. This way they flare up faster and generate heat better. Sprinkle again with nitrogen fertilizers, or better spill with a hot solution. I spread the hay over the entire area of the ridge loosely, I do not trample it down to the very top of the ridge, on the curb. Then I fill in the soil, and the hay settles. The layer of soil on the hay is 15 cm.

3. The groundwater is deep. Pour biofuel at the bottom - manure with a layer of 20 cm, on top of the soil 20 cm. If hay, straw or reeds, which must be sprinkled with nitrogen fertilizers, are used as biofuels, then a layer of 15 cm is sufficient.

Every year I use a three-year compost as a soil. Scientists have developed how to properly fill the ridge with straw, bark, so T. P. Koryakina from VIR defended her Ph. D. dissertation on this topic. For 1 kg of straw cutting, up to 54 g of mineral fertilizers are applied in the form of a solution, incl. ammonium nitrate or urea, superphosphate, potassium sulfate, magnesium sulfate, fluff lime, iron sulfate. It is difficult for me to make such complex mixtures, so I only sprinkle nitrogen-containing fertilizers. One year I brought in diammophos - yes, in this case the "burning" went better.

Now regarding the application of fertilizers in the form of a hot solution. In the first year, as I switched from manure to hay, I applied fertilizers in this way. Usually I prepare the greenhouse in the 20th of April, I still have snow on the site, there is still a block of ice in the well, water was hardly taken out of there. Then they heated it, and only then could they prepare the solution. For my husband and I, this is laborious. The next year I just sprinkled the fertilizer. Of course, warming up goes faster if you pour in a hot solution of fertilizers, well, nothing, we have nowhere to rush, let it warm up a little later. And once more I made a mistake. Hay in the winter is in my bulk cellar, there they are wrapped in potatoes.

In the spring we open the cellar, take the hay into the greenhouse. Once the cellar was heavily flooded in the spring by groundwater, and it got wet under the boxes. The day was sunny, and I decided to dry it. It was so dry in a day that it even crunched. Then this hay, like biofuel, did not "burn up" for a long time. It is better if the straw or hay is slightly damp. Every year I prepare the ridges in the greenhouse anew, i.e. the place remains the same, but the soil is replaced with fresh.

In the fall, after disinfecting the film shelters with sulfur checkers, I take out the soil from the tomato greenhouse, removing a layer of 5-10 cm (as the shovel picks up) and spread it under the bushes. In a cucumber greenhouse, where the hay "burned out" over the summer, only slightly undecomposed shreds sometimes remain in the corners, and a good land is obtained. I transfer it to a tomato greenhouse. In the cucumber, sawdust remains at the bottom of the ridge (there used to be bark), which work for 5-6 years. The last time we filled up fresh sawdust was in 1999, i.e. today they have worked for 6 years, and we still left them. They are, of course, already brown, but they will still work.

In the fall I loosen the sawdust with a pitchfork and cover it with a black film so that it does not weather out, because the roof of the greenhouse is covered with Stablen film (120 microns) - I don’t change it or remove it for four years. I put the three-year compost into the greenhouse in the fall, but the hay will be spread over the ridges only in the spring. The passage between them is quite wide, made of wood, I cover it with old foil and pour compost onto the ridges with a rather high hill. I cover it from above with a black film so that it does not weather out, does not dry out.

Some gardeners throw snow into the greenhouse in winter if the film is not removed from the roof. It's not obligatory. It is worth covering the soil with any film, but not with lutrasil, the soil will freeze, but will not dry out. It is laborious to fill the cucumber greenhouse every year, but this way I get away from diseases. Some gardeners have collapsible greenhouses, they grow crops in them for a couple of years, and then transfer them to a new place. It is right. But it is not true when cucumbers and tomatoes are changed in places a year later. Indeed, some diseases persist in the soil for up to six years.

So, the ridge is filled with biofuel, soil has been brought in. Immediately, without leveling the soil with a rake, I apply (scattering over the entire area) superphosphate up to 90 g, complex fertilizer (Kemira universal, ekofosk or azofosk) up to 70 g per 1 m². You need a little less for cucumbers. If the compost has matured for three years and has not been used to grow other crops, then this is a rather fertile land, in this case, the fertilizer rates when filling the ridges should be reduced. But I use compost like this: every season on the compost heap I get a crop of vegetables in two turns. This means that by the end of the third year, this section gave me six harvests. But I still use such compost in the greenhouse, as it is clean, with normal acidity (pH-7).

Nobody, of course, counted how much nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium in my compost, but since I use it like that, I fill the ridge according to all the requirements of pepper agrotechnology. From organic matter, I add omug to the holes.

You can fill the ridge with rotted manure if the biofuel is hay, and the soil is garden soil, and not compost. Often novice gardeners ask the question: should the ridge be lime? Measure the acidity of the soil. For peppers, the pH is 6-6.6. A three-year-old matured compost has a pH of 7.0 (I took it to the laboratory for analysis myself). So in this case, no dolomite flour, no chalk, no ash need to be poured. If your acidity is pH-6, then you also need not add deoxidizers. But according to the rules of agricultural technology, when applying mineral fertilizers and when feeding with mineral fertilizers, the soil becomes acidic.

To prevent this from happening, before applying mineral fertilizers in spring, you can lightly sprinkle the beds with ash, chalk, dolomite flour. Carefully close up the fertilizers with a rake, level the soil and immediately cover the entire ridge with a film (any - black, transparent, old or new) so that the soil does not dry out. And biofuel heating will go faster.

In small greenhouses, the ridge must be prepared in the same way as in a greenhouse. True, in a greenhouse, biofuel can warm up to + 14 ° C in 5-6 days, but in a greenhouse this process is slower. It "flares up" even more slowly if the ridge is filled with leaves.