Growing Tomatoes From Stepchildren

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

Creative search is a guarantee of a harvest

Our family received a garden plot in the area of the village of Mga, Kirovsky district in 1950. At that time, sappers were still working there, doing mine clearance at the sites of past battles. The site was located on waste land, dug by shell craters, here and there were dugouts, trenches and a mass of barbed wire embedded in the ground.

There was no vegetation layer at all: burnt earth, gray podzol and hard, water-tight clay. There, for the first time, we rooted up virgin soil, creating a fertile layer, buying fertilizers.

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It was not easy to immediately determine what the land needed for it to yield, so that a garden could be grown on it. Along with the tools usual for a gardener - shovels, rakes, pitchforks, hoes, etc. - I acquired the necessary devices and reagents to understand what the earth needs to improve its fertility. So, equipped with "technology", he took the first steps and every year accumulated experience and knowledge. Now, decades later, I can already do without instruments, accurately determining by eye how much and what kind of fertilizer or lime should be applied to the soil in order to ensure the harvest I need.

From about the second year of the development of the site, I began to grow tomatoes. I think I was one of the first gardeners to do this. Tomatoes were then considered exotic plants in the Leningrad region. There was no literature, reference materials on growing them in those years. Therefore, they themselves, by trial and error, selected agricultural technology.

Now it is difficult to imagine the life of gardeners without various plastic films and covering materials. But we did without them. As now, tomatoes were grown through seedlings, which were obtained in an insulated garden bed under glass frames, using biofuel. Seedlings were grown in natural conditions, not on windowsills. And the result was strong, stocky seedlings that cannot be compared with those grown in a city apartment. Seedlings, already almost ready for harvesting, were planted on the beds not earlier than June 10-12, in order to protect them from the return cold.

And already at the end of July, in extreme cases - at the beginning of August, there were red tomatoes right in the beds. We removed the unripe fruits with plants from the open ground beds in the barn, laying them out on the floor or, even more efficiently, hanging them on the wall upside down for ripening. These works were completed no later than August 20 - before the appearance of cold, destructive growth, which usually occurs in the third decade of August.

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Mastering agricultural technology, he also led the selection of varieties. There were few of them then, about ten. For example, ground Gribovskie No. 1180, bush height 60 cm, with fruits up to 120 g; soil Alpatieva No. 1166 - very early, productive, with sowing seeds in the soil; Bizon 639 variety - early fruitful, multi-chamber fruits, up to 130 g; Eramana 20 variety - early ripening, flat-round, multi-chamber fruits, up to 250 grams and Korneevskie variety - very productive, resistant to sudden temperature changes, fleshy fruits, thin skin.

Older people probably remember well that the most delicious were the tomatoes brought from the Astrakhan region and Krasnodar region. They were then sold at the Blacksmith Market in Leningrad. Therefore, having grown on my site in the open ground, and with the appearance of the film and in the greenhouse, another variety of tomatoes, I went to the Blacksmith Market, bought the famous southern tomatoes and compared their taste with my own grown on the garden plot. If my tomatoes even came close to them in taste, and at the same time in presentation, then I left this variety for the next year, taking two or three fruits, the largest, for seeds.

With the appearance of electricity in the areas since 1960, he changed the technology of heating with biofuel to electric, having built a simple device that gives heat. It consisted of electric bulbs connected in series and placed in iron boxes or jars filled with dry sand.

The technology of growing tomatoes has also changed somewhat. I use it now. For growing tomatoes, I began to use stepchildren obtained from mother bushes. The technology is as follows: the seedlings grown in natural conditions at 35-40 days of age (which cannot be compared with the seedlings obtained on the window) are planted in open ground. And then I take up to four stepsons from her, for example, from the Dubok variety (I purchased it more than 10 years ago at the Belogorka Research Institute). These stepchildren take root and become independent plants that yield crops.

But it has long been known that stepchildren are more productive. I want to note that Dubok tomatoes deserve the attention of gardeners both in their taste and marketability, as well as for the compactness of their bush and unpretentiousness, high yield when extending the growing period with supporting heating until October 15.

The ability of plants, including tomatoes, to form a normal or even increased fruit yield depends on a number of factors (sometimes even imperceptible). The main concern of the gardener is to provide the plant with all the necessary nutrients even during the period of soil preparation and planting. If, however, a shortage of some elements is suddenly found, which is expressed in poor growth and development of plants, they need to be added in dressings, including foliar ones.

It must be remembered that the need of plants for nutrients and their ability to remove nutrients from the soil with a crop varies depending on their age, early maturity, and different weather conditions. The yield is greatly influenced by the mechanical composition of the soil and its fertility. All this must be known and used. Anyone who wants to achieve success must constantly learn, accumulate his own and others' experience. I believe that getting a full crop from plants means squeezing it out with labor.