Weekend Greenhouse For Tomatoes

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

How to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse, visiting the country only on weekends

Such different varieties of tomatoes

This project appeared on our site quite unexpectedly. In its implementation, I did not take any part, one might say, I was an outside observer. Therefore, its description on the pages of the magazine is, in a way, a woman's view from the outside.

For several seasons, our site had a huge greenhouse with an area of almost 80 m2. Various types and varieties of tomatoes, peppers, as well as eggplants and melons gave a good harvest in it.

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A new greenhouse appeared at the end of May. It had to be built because there were tomato seedlings left after planting them in a large greenhouse. Boris Petrovich last season decided to plant them there more freely than usual. He does not like thickened plantings, and adheres to this rule on any crops. We handed over some of the seedlings to good hands, but 16 plants still remain. And it was a pity to throw away the seedlings, because so much effort was expended in growing them.

Then Boris Petrovich decided to make a greenhouse for one bed. While it was being built, it did not have a name, and later, already in operation, the name was born - a weekend greenhouse.

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And so, in order not to destroy the remaining seedlings, on May 12, having populated a large greenhouse with plants, the husband hastily began to create another greenhouse. Time was running out, tomato plants were tormented in cups, their root system asked to go to the ground, but we could not provide it with such an opportunity. Boris Petrovich was worried: with these plants we lost a whole "moon" (lunar cycle) in their development.

Cucumbers grow next to tomatoes

In the fall of 2008, my husband mastered a strip of land on the site along our fence - 25x7 meters. On it grew weeds up to the waist and some kind of aggressive bush. I had to mow and cut it all. Then Boris Petrovich poured a thick layer of wood chips onto the vacant space. And already a ridge for tomatoes was put up on it.

It was 5 meters long, 1 meter wide and half a meter high. Her husband edged her with boards. With its sides it was oriented to the south-north, so that during the day it got as much sun as possible, and the ends - to the west-east.

Boris Petrovich is always very serious about filling the ridges with soil for planting any plants. He filled the box of the tomato bed in the following order: he chopped the turf soil at the bottom with a layer of about 20-25 cm, put a layer of hay above it - about 10 cm, the hay was covered with fertile soil with a layer of 20 cm, taken from the warm ridges where zucchini used to grow. Having built this bed, he erected a frame over it, covered it with foil. The result was a kind of mini-greenhouse, and we planted the remaining 16 tomato plants on May 22nd. The seedlings got into favorable conditions and quickly took root.

But the construction of the greenhouse continued. In the course of further work, Boris Petrovich decided to make adjustments: at each end of the future greenhouse, he made boxes for cucumber plants. They were 90x100 cm in size and 70 cm high. The filling of the soil under the cucumbers was different: on the chopped sod soil he laid a thick layer of manure, then a layer of hay, and on it - a layer of soil taken from potato beds. Two cucumber plants were planted in each box.

As a result, the greenhouse turned out to be 8.6 m long, 2.7 m wide, the passages around the ridge were 80 cm each. Its height in the ridge was 2.5 m.

While the walls of the greenhouse were being built, the roof was being built, then everything was covered with film, I looked at the future greenhouse with alarm. I was worried that now I would have to oversee the ventilation of another greenhouse when my husband left for work.

But my fears were not justified: my care for this greenhouse was not required. The experiment that the husband decided to carry out on it was to ventilate the greenhouse without human intervention. By June 15, it looked like this: its top was twisted along a length of 6 m on two bars and attached to the ridge of the greenhouse. Boris Petrovich insulated the new structure inside, around the entire perimeter, with black film to a height of 50 cm, and he also covered the garden with the same film. Now the warmth was kept both in the greenhouse and in the ridge.

One week in the morning my husband rolled up the film on the roof with the help of bars and tied them to the ridge of the greenhouse, and in the evening he restored the greenhouse roof. And in the second decade of June, he finally tied the rolled-up film bars and did not untie them for two months. The tomato plants were freed. For two months, both day and night, the planting of tomatoes was provided with sunlight, fresh air, wind, rain. I looked at all this incredulously, thinking: what will come of this experiment at the end of the season?

True, Boris Petrovich built similar greenhouses back in the 90s, but then such liberties were not allowed for plants. At night and in the rain, we lowered the blocks with the film, restoring the integrity of the roof. In the past season, my husband was optimistic.

Two months of freedom were given to plants so that direct sunlight stimulates deeper penetration of roots into the soil. Wind and air movement helped the tomato flowers to pollinate. Caring for tomatoes at this time consisted in the fact that Boris Petrovich watered the plants abundantly once a week. At the same time, he used the so-called double watering: he spilled the ridge abundantly once, then two hours later there was another abundant watering. The water for irrigation was only warm, slightly podzolized. He poured about 200 liters of it onto the ridge. The husband watered this ridge only on Saturday or Sunday.

He usually worked with the tops of tomatoes the day before watering - on Friday or Saturday. This work consisted of cleaning tomato plants and tying them up. Therefore, the name stuck to this greenhouse - "weekend greenhouse". But by the end of the season, I decided for myself that it could have another name - "a greenhouse for lovely ladies", since it is comfortable to work with tops in it, and to water too.

Observing from year to year how my neighbor in the country comes out of her greenhouse wet and exhausted after work, I thought that in our greenhouse she would work and breathe much more comfortably, and labor productivity would be higher. It should be noted that the roof did not roll down over the plantings of cucumbers in this greenhouse. They seemed to be sitting in their compartments, growing and bearing fruit continuously. And to my surprise, we collected a lot of cucumbers from these two beds.

Tomatoes ripen in the greenhouse

I often think: how does my husband manage to combine the incompatible. And, surprisingly, always get high yields with these experiments. The tomato crop in this greenhouse was powerful and abundant. All the bushes bore great fruit. At the end of the season, I wondered: how could they fit into the lunar calendar at such a late age, how they were able to go through the whole cycle perfectly from the survival rate of overgrown seedlings to the excellent fruit set on each plant. But Boris Petrovich constantly said that an unacceptable set of such different varieties of tomatoes was collected on this ridge, and this is a big drawback.

The second disadvantage is late fruiting. It fell in mid - late August. Rare tomatoes were fully ripe on the vine; we collected the bulk of them in blanche ripeness and ripened in boxes. And there are a lot of such boxes with tomatoes from this greenhouse. Despite the dry and rainy summer, planting with tomatoes withstood all the troubles and fulfilled their main function - they gave abundant fruiting. After August 20 the top of the greenhouse was closed, the plants were aired through the vents made on the sides of the greenhouse. Before closing the top, about half of the tops of the tomatoes were removed.

We do not present the drawings of the greenhouse here, because in the process of growing tomatoes, we found many more flaws in it: somewhere it is necessary to change the size, add some elements to the project, choose more thoroughly the range of plants just for it. But one thing I know: this project will now live and be refined on our site.

I described the principle of the device of this greenhouse, someone can adopt it, improve it, taking into account their requirements and capabilities, and get a result, maybe even higher than ours. Good luck to all!