Improvement of the garden - councils of the dacha
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How to manage a kitchen garden
Strict adherence to proportions when diluting solutions and fertilizer application rates is, of course, commendable, and plants will immediately notice this concern for themselves. But can such scrupulousness be considered a guarantee of generous harvests? Or is it still something else?
Poor birch
I was born in a village, so the acquaintance with the land began with the earliest childhood. I remember, I did not go to school yet, and my mother already instructed me to plant a bow.
The intervals between the holes made equal to the distance between the thumb and middle finger. I know, it turned out to be cramped, but the task of growing large bulbs was then not standing: all summer we tore a feather, put in salad and soup. And how delicious they were at that time! And I was proud that I had coped well with the work assigned to me.
When she got married, she became the mistress of her own garden. I already wanted to grow seedlings myself (especially tomatoes and peppers). In the first year she was busy with her, as with a small child, afraid even in the smallest details to backtrack from the agricultural technology that my mother adhered to. And the landings thanked me with a generous harvest. After that, I finally believed in myself - that means I can "manage" the garden!
In the meantime (and in the yard was the very end of 1990), the economy in the country became quite shaky, a default occurred, our collective farm collapsed. There was nowhere to work. We decided to move with my husband to the city. But without the earth life seemed to be boring. Bought a plot, I began to gently again garden.
Here, by the way, is an occasion for me to share my garden impressions. When my husband and I started cultivating the plot, the land there was a complete nightmare: solid, all overgrown with weeds. We ordered sand and manure from a dump truck, we planted all this good into the ground, the soil became loose and fertile.
But the rotted manure is still laid out in the garden every year, however, we buy it already in much smaller quantities - it is too expensive. And once again in two years in early spring we cultivate the land with copper sulphate (this came about after one day when almost half of the onion crop rotted). Also, every autumn, having finished harvesting, we plant rye, managing to plant it in the ground before frost. The first time they started using this green manure, they decided to leave the green puffy "blanket" grown on empty beds until spring - it was a pity to destroy it.
But they bitterly regretted later, because the rye at the beginning of the next season sucked all the moisture out of the earth, and it became hard as a stone. They barely plowed, somehow planted, so the harvest was so-so.
Talking about the improvement of the garden, I can not help mentioning how we got rid of the birch tree. We had a lot of it, the carpet spread throughout the site. For a long time I worked with her, my main mistake was that I kept waiting until she got out and gained strength. When I realized this, I asked my husband and son after the first weeding of the hoe to plow the beds with a plow. And so several times, and they are hunched up higher and higher. Birch, poor, only get out, and her land falls asleep. She could not stand such mockery and disappeared.
See also: Accomplishment and decoration of the cottage and garden area with their own hands. Lawn breakdown.
Sleepy potatoes and fresh onions
On our 9 acres we plant little by little, but the main crop is potatoes. Under it, we have allocated three hundred parts. A couple of years ago they bought a walk-behind tractor, and there were less problems with caring for our second bread. In the spring, several times the husband plows a potato plot, then with a homemade plow he makes 60 cm wide grooves with his son, into which I throw tubers and fill them with earth. I don’t quite agree with the widespread opinion that the sooner you plant potatoes, the higher the yield. For example, I experimented with deadlines for several years and did not find any connection. Now I’ve returned to where I started, I determine the date of planting in the old fashion: when the blossoming leaves grow on a birch to the size of a coin of 5 rubles, then I get down to business.
Tubers for planting I choose only a round, regular shape. I never cut them-I do not know how other dacha people have, and my experience has shown that in this case the germination is bad (for the sake of interest one cuts not the tubers bought by the store, for the sake of interest, so they did not rise at all).
Before planting, I must germinate them. But that's interesting: in recent years, potato began for some reason with difficulty in the light to produce shoots, as if sleepy it somehow. In the whole district this situation, I do not know exactly what it is connected with, but it all began after the dry summer of 2010. Therefore, seed tubers are now harvested two to three times more for safety than before.
But I still plant the bow the way my mother taught. And the distance between the holes measured in the same way, which reported at the beginning of the letter. Planting material does not soak and do not work. But when the pen rises high, I sprinkle on the tank with a solution of salt (a glass on a bucket of water). I repeat the treatment after two treatments. Once a season I feed onions with ashes: I just spread it around the bed, and then water it abundantly. Several times during the summer I loosen the soil between the rows. That's all the care. Harvest is always good: I plant about two and a half kilos, and I get five to six boxes of strong bulbs of medium size.
Transplantation: two or one?
But the special pride, of course, is the tomatoes. I grow everything in an open pound, as there is a lot of trouble with the greenhouse, and it costs a lot of money. I sow seeds for seedlings in early March, dive into boxes of 20-25 pcs. Then, when the sprouts are a little stronger, I water several times with diluted whey and milk (all proportions - by eye).
In early May, half the seedlings are first planted in a small guy from the old window frames, then only in the first days of June (there is no exact date-as the viburnum blooms, it means that there will be no recurrent frosts), I transfer to the open ground. The other half is planted directly into the ground in mid-May and wrapped in two layers of cover material. Of course, the plants under it are a bit dark, but they are protected from the stinging spring sun, and from the cold wind.
I keep them under such cover for two weeks, sometimes "letting" out to breathe clean air. Fruiting these bushes begin a week earlier than their counterparts who survived two transplants.
By the way, the landing holes for this operation are deep digging: I put them there for a large handful of humus, drench it abundantly, mix it and immerse the plants in the resulting mush. Then I fall asleep on the ground and for five days I forget about them. In the past year, I transplanted a few pieces, previously without soaking up earth lumps, i.e. completely dry. Then it was scary to look at these plants-they literally sprawled on the ground. But two days later they were no longer to be recognized: they straightened up and sat on the garden, as if nothing had happened, they even looked better than others. It turns out that it is not necessary to water tomatoes before transplanting!
See also: Beautiful and well-maintained beds with own hands
I always form bushes in two stems. I tear off the lower branches until the first brushes, and as soon as the second ones appear, I tear off already before them. Over the summer several times I feed plantings with the infusion of fermented mullein. I think that the main thing for tomatoes is plentiful, but reasonable watering, timely top dressing and necessarily timely pinching. I plant about 60 bushes. Our family of five people has enough fruit for both food and canning (and I roll up cans of 70-80), and it remains for relatives to hand them out. Varieties are always planted different, but I give special preference to Persimmon - the fruits are yellow, fleshy, tasty.
Peppers I put in small plastic boxes-packing, and I dive into separate glasses from under sour cream, on a bottom of which I put a peel from sunflower seeds. What for? And this allows for transplanting quickly and without damage to the roots to remove seedlings from these containers. In the open ground I plant before tomatoes on 7-10 days. According to my observations, peppers are more frost-resistant than they are. Of the varieties especially like the Californian miracle. Very much it is yielding, and its fruits are large, it is necessary to put up under the bushes. Very responsive to watering and making ash.
For a long time, radish could not grow in any way: either it rose badly, or the flea was eating it, or the roots were hard. Varieties in this case always took "ancient": Ruby, Heat, French Breakfast. And last year I decided to try Mal da deleted. She made deep grooves, drank abundantly, sowed seeds in this mud, fell asleep and watered again. The weather was warm, and after a day there were shoots. Watered often and abundantly, in two weeks we already ate delicious juicy roots.
The taste of Mal so far was excellent, no bitterness, no coarse fiber. And surprisingly, the plants did not shoot, but the growers were not rude. We ate them for a month! Over the summer, I sowed this radish three times, each time was happy. I decided that it was all about the cultivar with radishes.
And now I want to share the experience of growing cabbage. Previously, when transplanting seedlings to a pound, some plants died, not immediately, but after they started to grow. And last season, I laid out coarsely chopped nettles in holes with ash and humus - not a single plant died.
I think that before with humus, the larvae of the May beetle got into the soil and the roots of cabbage were eaten little by little. And the nettle scared them off. From the caterpillars I am saved by a solution of vinegar (I plant everything by eye), which I spray on the leaves.
Beagle-housewife
Last year, I sowed seeds of new varieties of remontant strawberries, Ruyan and Alexandrin, for me. Many went up, dived into the cups. Seeds, although they bought in a specialized store, but still managed to mix some nonsense with normal strawberries, which blossomed with inconspicuous yellow flowers and gave small, hard and tasteless berries (the authentic ones of Ruyan and Alexandrina were above all praise). I then transplanted it for interest under the apple tree, so she used to occupy the entire near-root circle for the summer. What will I do with her, has not yet decided.
We also have fruit bushes in the country. Here, for example, raspberry grows, and, one can say, by itself. In the spring I remove old branches, young I cut off at a level of the growth. Under the roots I spread out fresh rabbit dung (there is a lot of hay in it, it turns out it is an excellent mulch). If there is no long rain, I water myself. Harvest is always good, and so much so that not even all the berries have time to collect. Some of them I freeze and in the winter I make excellent compotes. Three years ago, bought two bushes of yellow raspberry Beglynka.
Because of its name, I’ve already prepared for the worst, but this raspberry doesn’t correspond to its name at all - it doesn’t run anywhere. On the contrary, I really want to propagate it, but so far it does not work out. The berries of her excellent taste are large. I advise everyone to put her on their site.
We also have Black Satin. One bush pleased with delicious berries in the first year of planting. And the next year, the kidneys froze over the entire blackberry - sharp May frosts “tried”. During the summer, the bushes moved a little, but there were no berries. But in the third year, the harvest was excellent.
In the joys of humus, I planted more under the bushes, watered abundantly, so they grew - climbed to the neighbors. From this I concluded: the blackberry loves space.
See also: How to beautify and decorate your garden or cottage
About duty and vocation
Often I admire those gardeners who accurately and accurately measure the rate of fertilizer application and scrupulously prepares various nutritional top dressings. Probably, when I retire, I can also afford such a "pharmacy" activity.
In the meantime, being a working mother and a caring daughter (my parents and my husband, thank God, are alive and well, live in the village, so I have to help them from time to time), I work in the garden on raids, one might say, on the fly. Parents condemn me for this: they, the old generation, have all the ranks and strictly according to the rules instituted many years ago. Convincing them does not make sense. So we work for them at the call of the heart, and in our country house - for the soul.
In the end, I would like to say one thing: you need not to spare the land for row spacing - the more space between the plants, the easier it is to take care of them, the higher the yield. I personally do in the garden a number of fixtures for all crops except tomatoes, peppers and cabbage.
© Author: Zulfiya Zalyayeva
Below other entries on the topic "Dacha and garden - with their own hands"
- Cucumbers and peppers under the newspapers - my reviews about the method
- Growing cucumbers in a warm garden - tips gardeners
- Cherry plum and peach, apricot from stones - reviews of the gardener
- How to grow chickpeas and how useful it is
- Sage cultivation - varieties and species
- A simple and easy way to harvest seeds for the next year
- Growing petunias (including ampel) - planting and care
- Rosemary: growing at home
- Mittlider method - my reviews (Bryansk)
- Magnolia - planting and care
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