Agricultural Technology In A Cold And Rainy Summer

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

The results of the season, or how we fought for the harvest

This year is not only the year of the financial crisis on the planet. One gets the impression that he has spread to the heavenly office. In our region, this spring and summer everyone suffered from a lack of sunny days, as they were constantly under the tutelage of a cloud cover. People and plants were sorely lacking sunlight. The weather was unstable with frequent rains. They were protracted, and at times stormy. However, compared to the previous summer season, nighttime temperatures were higher. This summer has passed in anticipation of sunny warm weather. There was little sun last spring, when we and all other gardeners were growing seedlings of thermophilic crops. If we didn't use artificial lighting at home, we wouldn't get good seedlings. And the harvest would be very different.

Another circumstance helped us this summer - the fact that my husband, Boris Petrovich, early, in April, moved to live in a summer cottage. There he built shelves for seedlings on the veranda and then, together with seedling bowls, moved from the apartment to the dacha. It was on the light film veranda that the illumination was maximum for the seedlings.

As soon as the warm days came, and the air began to warm up well, we began to harden the seedlings, taking them out into the fresh air. And yet the seedlings of cucumbers and melons turned out to be weak. Several melon plants died before they could move to the beds.

May also did not spoil us with the sun. Truly bright days accumulated in a month for a week, no more. The rest were overcast, with occasional glimpses of the sun in the bursting clouds. The spring was cloudy and dry. And as a result, due to the lack of rain, the cold was not driven out of the earth. And even in spite of the past rather warm winter, in spring the earth did not warm up without sun and rain. And in this cold land, we were all forced to plant heat-loving crops.

The earth did not warm up even in June, clouds again dominated the sky, and there were few sunny days. Even the high ridges did not completely save us this year. Moreover, in the second half of this month, the absence of the sun was aggravated by the rains. We listened to the weather forecasts hopefully, but it did not improve.

In general, the trend of this season can be reflected as follows: three days are sunny, then the weather deteriorates and the weekly rainy season begins. But we did not have spring frosts, there was only one small frost on the night of June 7-8. But he froze to us the ovaries of large-fruited pumpkins, although we covered them, but the tips of the plants were still frostbitten.

And yet, these vagaries of the weather did not affect the harvest in our large greenhouse (over 70 m?), Since the beds for planting all thermophilic crops were, as always, very carefully prepared and warmed up by the time of planting the seedlings. How we create such warm ridges - this technology my husband and I have repeatedly described in the magazine, those who are interested can pick up the old files and read them.

I want to note right away that the volume of the crop in the greenhouse this season was higher than in previous years, but its ripening was delayed by two weeks than last year, but the warm September helped to avoid losses and allowed the vegetables to ripen.

Here are the brief results of what we managed to grow in the greenhouse. I'll start with the main crop - tomatoes. This year we have updated almost all of the previous varieties, testing 19 new ones. The most fruitful were the pink honey and Mazarin tomatoes. The first of them produced the largest number of large heart-shaped fruits, some of which reached a weight of 800-900 grams.

We took the first large harvest of sweet peppers in mid-July, the second layer of peppers ripened by 20 August. We also took peppers to our table every day. The weight of sweet peppers averaged 240-280 grams, but there were individual specimens weighing up to 380 grams. The dimensions of individual peppers were 16x9 cm, 18x10 cm. At the stage of biological ripeness, the peppers delighted with their colors - the fruits were red, yellow, orange, chocolate.

Eggplants are especially pleased this season. They tied up without delay, and we got a big harvest from almost all the bushes. Only four plants were affected by moles, which disrupted their root system. These bushes were sick for a long time, but by the end of the season they recovered and still gave a crop. The eggplants we shot had an average weight of 180-280 grams, but there were specimens up to 400 grams and even up to half a kilogram! And the dimensions of some were 29x10 cm and 32x7 cm!

Watermelons in the greenhouse were set at the end of June, all the fruits ripened. We collected eight watermelons from four bushes. In the greenhouse, they all turned out to be large - more than 10 kilograms.

Six melon plants grew on a 6x1 m garden. This year we have removed 50 fruits from them. All melons are ripe, the last of them we removed on September 20. Fruit weight averaged 1.5 to 2.5 kg. There were no large melons weighing more than 3 kg, since at least seven ovaries developed on each plant. We carried out pollination of melon flowers in June one by one, manually, so we don't know whose merit in such an abundance of melons. We also described our technology of growing watermelons and melons more than once in the magazine. Those wishing to enjoy their own sweet and fragrant melons and watermelons next summer can study and taste it on their site.

Melons in the open field did not work out now. An analysis of why this season is such a situation with them is still ahead. Maybe we chose the wrong variety, the ovary for some reason went late. And in August we did not have enough strength to shelter the melon plantings from the cold rains. A lot of melons were tied, but the tops suffered from the rains, and in the last summer month they completely rotted. As a result, green melons lay on the melons, which never reached the consumer's condition. In previous years, in August we covered melons with melons so that the rains would not flood the root collars of the plants.

On the watermelon melon, in contrast to the greenhouse, this year there were half the fruit set. And the Kai variety did not show itself at all - large watermelons did not ripen on any of the lashes, the lashes themselves were weak, and the watermelons were small. The largest watermelon in the open field gave the Gift to the North variety. He turned out to be weighing 8 kg.

We will, of course, conduct another serious analysis of such results. Usually the lack of heat during cultivation and melons in our country is compensated to some extent by solar radiation. We place the ridges under these crops in sunny places, make the ridges high, and fill them with biofuel. And now the sun was not enough, apparently, this explains the more modest results on the melon. But every cloud has a silver lining: watermelons grown on melons turned out to be much tastier than those grown in a greenhouse.

At the end of the season, we harvested half of potatoes by volume than usual. But the quality of the tubers is higher. Probably, the quality was affected by the fact that this year we paid great attention to the preparation of planting material and planting care. But the potato tubers were smaller this year than the previous year. Maybe the fact that we, as always, tested several new varieties of potatoes played a role here. But, again, the potatoes turned out to be of very high taste, crumbly. Everyone who has tried our potatoes will undoubtedly agree with this.

Onions have also turned out to be smaller than usual. And he probably did not have enough solar heat.

As always, we had no problems with zucchini and squash. We have reaped a very rich harvest. The pumpkin also pleased us. Large-fruited varieties - Russian size - fruit weighing 50 kg; two Big Muk pumpkins - 30 kg and 35 kg; other varieties - Vitaminnaya - two pumpkins weighing 10 kg and one - 9 kg; variety Rossiyanka - two pumpkins - 5 and 6 kg; Kashtanka variety - one pumpkin weighing 5 kg is ripe; variety Hazelnut - fourteen pumpkins weighing from 1.5 to 3 kg. But the pumpkin ovary appeared late this year. The fruits began to be tied only in July.

As I already noted, the seedlings of cucumbers were weak today, but after planting on the garden bed they straightened out, our soil is very rich, the cucumbers quickly grew and gave a good harvest. Moreover, we ate the first cucumbers already on June 20.

We were also pleased with leeks, garlic - winter and summer - we have reaped a high harvest.

Carrots have been very successful today - the roots are even, very sweet, there are no small ones, the timely and correct thinning of the seedlings affected here. And the beets produced smooth, beautiful root crops, although they are a little smaller than last season.