Growing Pumpkins In Low Greenhouses

2023 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-26 20:34

Southerners love warmth

Pumpkin is a thermophilic culture. In addition, it has a long growing season. Here, in the North-West of Russia, it succeeds well on compost heaps, where its roots receive additional heat from the decomposition of the compost.

If you do not have a compost heap, but there are so-called compost containers, then it turns out that there is nowhere to grow this crop.

In order to guarantee a harvest of mature pumpkins, I have developed my own agricultural technique:

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Growing seedlings

On the bags with pumpkin seeds it is written: “They germinate at a temperature of 25 … 30 ° C, and this is really so. To create such conditions in a country house in a cool spring, I made a seedling installation.

It consisted of an inverted bucket without a bottom, placed a 25 W lamp in the bucket, put a sheet of iron on the bucket, and a metal herring can on it.

It was in it that I placed peat-baked pots with pumpkin seeds. Sev spent at the beginning of May. The lamp in the device burned around the clock. On the 6-8th day, the pumpkins rose and were immediately moved to a light windowsill, where they remained until the beginning of June.

Greenhouse

The greenhouse in which I planted the pumpkins was for early green crops. It consisted of green arches (steel tube in plastic) 1.2 m high and 1 m wide. After the supports were installed in the soil, the height of the greenhouse was 0.9–0.95 m. In the upper part, the arches were connected with rods using soft wire. At the ends, I installed thicker inclined rods, abutting against planks, obliquely driven into the ground.

The greenhouse was covered with plastic, the ends of which I tied and tied to the boards. Along the entire length of the greenhouse, I installed half-filled drinking water cylinders on film on both sides. They kept her from the gust of wind.

I got a greenhouse 5 meters long. Two of them were left for planting pumpkin seedlings.

Transplanting

In the space left for pumpkins, I planted four pumpkins: one of the Healing varieties, two of the Slasten varieties and one of the Kroshka varieties. When planting, I dug a hole 30 cm in diameter and 25 cm deep.

At the bottom of it, I laid a small amount of last year's hay, and filled the hole with a mixture of turf and humus. I prepared the seats in advance to warm the soil.

I planted seedlings there in early June, after placing the plants in place, I watered them with warm water.

Care

June was cool, but the pumpkins in the greenhouse were doing well. Then the long-awaited warmth came, and I opened the greenhouse. Then they grew up without shelter. He rarely watered the pumpkins, once he fed them with a humus mash. In early September, I removed the pumpkins. They are fully ripe. Pumpkin of the Healing variety pulled 5.6 kg (on the envelope with seeds it was written that the maximum weight was 5.5 kg). The weight of Slastena pumpkins was 2-3 kg, and the Kroshka variety was 1.5 kg.

In addition to these pumpkins, I planted two more pumpkins in the open ground. They developed much more slowly. And although they bore fruit, they did not ripen and could not be stored for a long time.