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Formation And Feeding Of Cucumber Plants
Formation And Feeding Of Cucumber Plants

Video: Formation And Feeding Of Cucumber Plants

Video: Formation And Feeding Of Cucumber Plants
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"Cucumber Encyclopedia". Part 2

Useful Tips

growing cucumbers
growing cucumbers

1. You can not overfeed cucumbers with nitrogen fertilizers. They will "fatten", bloom only with male flowers.

2. The taste of a cucumber depends on the conditions in which it grows. If the plant is bad: there is little sun, moisture or too hot and humid, then the development of greenery is delayed. At this time, bitterness begins to accumulate in it.

Therefore, if bitter cucumbers have gone, you need to find out what is holding back their growth. If the weather is cold, cover the bed with plastic wrap. Never water cucumbers with cold water. This alone can cause unwanted taste. Bitter cucumbers, if they still work out, should not be thrown away. When salted or pickled, the bitterness disappears.

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3. If the cucumbers have become like a question mark or a pear, this is a signal that they are missing something. For example, if you notice that the fruits are like balls, and sharply taper towards the opposite end, then they do not have enough nitrogen. Feed them mullein (1 part to 8 parts water). You can, of course, and a urea solution (no more than a matchbox for 10 liters of water). And if the cucumbers look like a pear, then you need to feed them with potassium (potassium sulfate). It is also good for potash starvation to sprinkle wood ash on the beds (in fact, this is useful for cucumbers for many reasons).

4. If the cucumbers went with constrictions, ugly, twisted, it means that the temperature in the greenhouse is too high (above 33 ° C), and the humidity is low (below 55%). Therefore, you need to monitor the watering of the cucumbers and the airing of the greenhouse.

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Garter cucumber

In principle, there are no special tricks in this matter. However, let me remind you, just in case, of some features:

- The shoots are tied vertically to the supports located in the upper part of the greenhouse and should be distributed in such a way that the top of any shoot is always as illuminated as possible; the lack of light reaching the top of the plant is one of the reasons for the sterility of the pollen of future flowers. As a result, these flowers will not give cucumbers.

- When the lashes reach the upper part of the support for further growth, they are directed vertically down, and in no case along the horizontally located support of the greenhouse; if you direct the whip horizontally, then with its leaves it will cover the entire light space from above. This will lead to a sharp decrease in the illumination of plants, and as a result, to a decrease in yield.

Formation of cucumber plants

A cucumber plant must be formed, pinched shoots, because the rapid growth of the stems will only weaken the plant, and instead of the fruits there will be only yellowed ovaries. The first rule for the formation of cucumber hybrids is to remove the ovaries and lateral lashes from the first four leaves. They do this due to the fact that otherwise, the first zelentsy take all the food on themselves and thereby take away precious summer time. As a result, a week or two passes, and there is not even a trace of a powerful vegetative mass. Its presence is one of the main conditions for the future formation of the crop. In the future, you should pinch each side lash over the second or third sheet. This option of pinching the side lashes will lead to the formation of a crop not only on the main trunk, but also on each remaining section of any side lash.

Pruning leaves in cucumber plants

For cucumber plants, the most optimal cut is, of course, all yellowed leaves, as well as those leaves that are located below the fruiting zone. In this case, the leaves should be cut not before the first greenery, but a little less, leaving 2-3 leaves before it. The leaves in the fruiting part of the lash do not bring absolutely any benefit, at the same time absorbing their share of nutrients and creating unnecessary shade. In addition, they prevent the resumption of fruiting in this part of the lash. Removal of leaves below the fruiting zone leads to its renewal in this part of the lash due to the appearance of new lateral shoots. Using this technique, you will forget about what the phrase known among gardeners means: "the cucumbers are gone." With this technology, modern hybrids can intensively bear fruit until the end of September,until the night frosts kill the plants.

How to feed cucumbers

growing cucumbers
growing cucumbers

All of the above hybrids are referred to as intensive type hybrids. This means that they require a fractional application of increased doses of fertilizers and at the same time please us with a huge harvest. Fractional fertilization takes place through a series of continuous fertilizing.

The first three weeks after planting are usually sufficient for the plants to be fertilized in advance. And only then you should start regular feeding, and at the same time do not be lazy. A delay with just one of them can lead to the fact that the cucumbers on a certain tier simply will not tie.

I recommend feeding once a week. At the same time, it is impossible to give a certain standard scheme, since cucumbers are extremely sensitive to the lack of any nutrient, and soils, as you know, are different for everyone. It is most reasonable to alternate top dressing with a complex fertilizer like Kemira with top dressing with mullein and parallel sprinkling of the whole soil with ash and top dressing with potassium sulfate, because the need for potassium in thermophilic plants increases significantly under unfavorable conditions.

In general, it is worth noting that feeding cucumber plants with weak solutions of nitrogen fertilizers, unlike the general majority of other vegetable crops, can be carried out until the end of the growing season. The only thing to remember: you need to do this only if you detect signs of nitrogen starvation on the plants themselves (otherwise, nitrates may accumulate in the fruits).

It is worth noting one very important point. Highly productive cucumber hybrids are very finicky in terms of nutrition (much more finicky than the same tomatoes). And if, due to your own absence at the right time in the garden or simply due to ignorance, you cannot recognize what your pets lack and take action quickly, then the next wave of ovaries will not pollinate, and the cucumbers themselves will begin to mope. Therefore, it is much safer to switch from the previously adopted option of fractional feeding to feeding through fertilizers with long-term exposure (in Russia, such fertilizers include APIONs).

They will not have any "headaches" about what is missing again, and there is no need to carry out additional fertilizing - it is enough to put a packet of APION-30 under each future cucumber bush at a depth of 10-12 cm when planting. All that remains is to water regularly. And you can significantly save on the purchase of fertilizers if you place APIONs not under each bush, but between them (after all, the root system of cucumbers is very large, and the roots will reach for food without problems), for example, in the middle between four bushes, only then will you need APION- 100.

Diseases and pests of cucumbers

In recent decades, cucumbers have developed a host of additional diseases that gardeners did not even hear about 50 years ago. I will try to list the difficulties associated with the main diseases that you need to know about in advance, so that when you come to your garden one weekend, you will not see the almost dead plants that a week ago delighted you with their wonderful foliage. So, the following cucumber problems should be kept in mind.

1. Cucumbers are highly susceptible to root rot. For prophylactic purposes, to combat this disease, the plants are watered with a solution of trichodermine (you can simply add it to the soil, but then there will be a very large consumption of the drug). However, the harvest will become simply "golden" if you continue to water the cucumbers with this preparation until the end of the growing season. Therefore, some precautions should be taken. Firstly, water should not be allowed to enter the root collar and near it: watering should be carried out at some distance from the root collar. Secondly, the area of the root collar should be periodically sprinkled with crushed coal, especially in cold and humid weather (here it is better to overdo it than to pull out then the dead plants, which suddenly wither instantly).

2. In hot weather, spider mites attack cucumber plants. It is quite simple to determine that this pest has visited you: small punctures are visible on the affected leaves, and the leaves themselves become, as it were, parchment. The most effective and safest way to combat it is Fitoverm. Usually one spray is enough and the cucumbers will come to life again. In case of severe damage, it should be sprayed twice. It is necessary to spray not only the upper part of the leaf and stems, but also very carefully the lower part, because the vast majority of pest individuals are located on the lower side of the leaf. Attention! Before spraying, leaves with a very strong degree of damage must be removed and burned. This is done in order to slightly reduce the number of the pest. Do not be afraid of this drug: it decomposes extremely quickly,and after two days you can harvest the fruit.

3. Almost in any summer (naturally, it is stronger in cool and rainy) plants are affected by powdery mildew or downy mildew. Olive spotting is also possible. Against all these diseases, it is imperative to carry out preventive spraying 1 time in 10-14 days with the drug "Immunocytofit" (1 tablet per 2 liters of water). This will save you from the early appearance of diseases and increase the defenses of plants. I advise you to start treating with this drug from about mid-July with an interval of two weeks, and even earlier in a cold rainy summer. The drug is absolutely harmless to humans, so the greens can be collected on the day of processing (although I prefer to play it safe once again and start collecting only the next day).

How to protect cucumbers from a cold snap?

growing cucumbers
growing cucumbers

The unpredictability of the weather often ruins the young vegetable plants that we grow with such care. Moreover, it is often not the aboveground part that freezes, but simply the roots are very cooled, which in cucumbers are even more sensitive to low temperatures.

And for this, negative temperatures are not needed at all - with the same success, cucumbers can die even with a normal temperature drop to 3 … 6 ° C. The reason is that at low temperatures the roots of plants do not freeze, but lose their ability to function normally. Therefore, on the one hand, it turns out that it is better not too early to sow cucumbers, but on the other hand, our fruiting period is already too limited. And besides, in June, the body, which suffered from a vitamin deficiency during the long winter and spring, will not harm the fresh cucumbers at all.

Therefore, you have to plant them earlier. And this automatically means that there will be constant concern about how cucumbers will cope with this or that cold night, and the need for a whole range of preventive measures. In addition, there are agrotechnical methods of increasing the cold resistance of cucumber recognized in practice. Here are some of them.

1. Presowing hardening of seeds. Seeds (non-germinated) in a damp cloth are placed in a refrigerator for 2 days and kept at a temperature of 0 ° C, after which they are immediately sown. The matter should be kept moist all the time. The event is quite dangerous (if the seeds hatch, they will inevitably die; they will also die at a lower temperature), although if all the requirements are met, it gives good results.

2. Cultivation of cucumber on steam beds allows planting in unheated greenhouses even from the end of April (provided additional shelters and films) or from the beginning of May. In this case, two weeks before planting seedlings or sowing seeds, the entire surface in the greenhouse is filled with a biofuel layer of at least 30 cm (as a rule, this is fresh non-frozen manure, straw, sawdust, house waste and leaves with lime), which is then covered with a soil layer 15 cm with the addition of complex mineral fertilizers. After that, the ridges are spilled with hot water. It should be noted that cucumber plants, in which the root system is in normal temperature conditions due to heated biofuel, can tolerate air temperature drops to + 1 … + 5 ° С for 1-2 days.

3. Mulching cucumber ridges with transparent plastic wrap. For this, an old, worn-out film is useful. The growth rate of cucumbers in this case increases significantly, because they are very sensitive to soil temperature.

4. In the case of sowing seeds, covering areas of soil with crops also with an additional film, which, of course, is removed when seedlings appear.

5. Formation inside the greenhouse of additional greenhouses with arcs, which are initially covered with a film, because under the film, the temperature is slightly higher, and then, when the air temperature rises, with a thick covering material. The air gap formed in this case between the glass of the greenhouse and the film of the inner greenhouse will work according to the principle of a thermos, and inside the greenhouse, i.e. in the immediate vicinity of cucumbers, it will be much warmer. An even better result is obtained if you sow seeds not in a greenhouse, but in a heated greenhouse, in which, along with mulching, arcs are installed inside - the fact is that a small space of a greenhouse with biofuel heats up faster and better than a rather large air space of a greenhouse.

6. Grafting of a cucumber on a cold-resistant stock - pumpkin. The most rational is the "injection in a shot". Sowing of the stock should be carried out 4-5 days later than the scion (but this is in my case, since the seeds of my pumpkin sprout steadily on the second or third day). Usually, experts recommend planting a stock (i.e. pumpkin) 2-3 days later.

Apparently, the planting time should be chosen individually, based on the germination rate of a particular pumpkin and specific watermelons and melons. It is better to take a stock with one real leaf. For better coalescence of components, it is preferable to maintain a temperature of 25 … 30 ° C at this time. To get a good vaccine, you need to practice first.

7. Increase cold resistance by soaking seeds and spraying plants with Epin stimulants and microelements, the use of humic preparations.

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