MY METHOD FOR GROWING EARLY CUCUMBERS - A STEP-BY-STEP DESCRIPTION OF PLANTING AND CARE

Often The early harvest of cucumbers is difficult to obtain due to unfavorable weather conditions. O. RUBTSOVA, a resident of St. Petersburg, found the original solution to this problem.

I really love cucumbers and always try to get the first harvest as early as possible, and with the least expense. The experiment began a few years ago: each subsequent year, planted cucumber seedlings for 5-7 days earlier than the year before. And the results showed: do not need to plant dozens of plants, enough for a family and six. With them, I collect cucumbers as much as others from "plantations", and on average the yield increased by 2,5 times.

SEWING AND SCALING OF THE CUCUMBER SESSION

For early planting, the seedlings must be hardened. It is recommended to soak the seeds of cucumbers in a damp cloth, and then, naklyunuvshiesya, put it for several days in the refrigerator. Such a stress in the beginning of life!

Yes, and this troublesome thing is to soak, monitor (and seeds germinate, as a rule, at the same time), remove rotten ones. Yes, and it must be somehow combined with the lunar sowing calendar ... In short, I went the other way.

In mid-March, I sow dry seeds of cucumbers in peat tablets. It is very convenient for growing pumpkin crops - 100% germination, invulnerability of tender shoots for pests, and even very old seeds in tablets germinate better.

After sowing, I put the tablets in containers, put them in plastic bags ... and put them on an uninsulated, but glazed balcony. In some places, cold air from the street passes through the gap, but the balcony door opened into the warm room softens the Spartan conditions a little, and the plants sprout at a temperature of no higher than 8 °.

From the moment of “birth”, my cucumbers have been fighting for life, taking for granted the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures. They will not need to be accustomed to this later. And besides, temperature changes have a very good effect ... on fruiting.

Yes, in the cold, seeds will germinate on 3-5 days later than in warmth. For insurance (since many seeds of poor quality are on sale), I sow seeds three times more than I need.

---

See also:  Technology of growing early cucumbers

---

Subtlety of picks

After the emergence of shoots, I always remove the reticulum from peat tablets. And do not listen to sellers who advise this mesh not to remove and plant plants along with it! One day I did so and lost all the cucumbers in the greenhouse, already flowering.

IT IS INTERESTING. Sometimes in peat tablets, cucumber roots first appear, and then cotyledon leaves. Hpavnoe - do not miss this moment. If the spine is still small and has not made its way through the net, then I pinch its tip, but only by 1-2 mm. If he made his way through the net, then without fear I cut it off along with the net. At an early stage of development, the plant does not experience stress from a pick. But then it will build up a good root system, which will certainly affect the harvest.

But if diving pumpkin cultures, when they already have the first real leaf, they will be ill and badly transfer the transplant.

Since I plant few bushes, it is important that the fruiting is abundant, and each cucumber can feed the plant. Therefore, the priority is to form a good root system. After an early dive, plants actively increase it.

IT IS INTERESTING. In the autumn, when I removed the cucumber plants from the ground, I noticed that those of them with the tip of the main root were nipped, found themselves with a huge number of roots, and their harvest was much higher.

The top part of the tablet, in which there are no roots, is carefully removed before planting the plant on the bed. If there is no way to immediately plant the climbing plants to the garden in the greenhouse, then I put a little coconut substrate on the bottom of the tank, where the peat tablets are located, so that the roots are not denuded, and put the containers with the seedlings as close to the balcony glass as possible to where it is colder.

Terms of planting seedlings in the greenhouse

In the greenhouse I plant seedlings in a few terms. The first is at the end of March or beginning of April (if the temperature is outside). 2-3 plants with cotyledon leaves move to a permanent place. Experience has shown that immediately planted seedlings of freshly picked cucumbers are not sick and begin to slowly (since it is still cold outside) grow. The planting period for two plants of the second wave of cucumbers is mid-late April. The last, third wave -1 -2 bush (and also in the phase of cotyledon leaves) in the first decade of June. I sow them in early June, and also in peat tablets. These plants will bear fruit from the beginning of August, when cucumbers planted in the spring will already reduce their productivity. They are planted on the edge of the ridge, where the daikon sown in mid-March grew.

IT IS INTERESTING. You can plant seedlings of cucumbers so early only on hot ridges.

PREPARATION OF HOT GRACES UNDER CUCUMBERS

I prepare the hot ridges in the greenhouse in early November. I extract the soil from each ridge onto the bayonet of the shovel. I put sawdust at the bottom - thermal insulation from the cold lower layer of soil (I don’t water them), then a layer of hay, on which I put a good layer of fresh horse manure with sawdust.

I spill it all with water.

And finally, the top layer is earth mixed with 2-year-old compost, in which superphosphate, kalimagnesia, ash, ground egg shells, prolonged-action fertilizer, chaga (plant material that I buy at the pharmacy), and biofungicide tablets are added. All this is mixed well with a hand cultivator. Then I water again: first with water, and then with a concentrated infused solution - a mixture of bird droppings, horse manure and sapropel.

In late autumn or early winter, I fall asleep with snow, to prevent the soil from drying out due to its freezing. And in the beginning of March there is no snow on the beds, and I shovel snowdrifts from the walls of the greenhouse so that they do not obscure it.

In spring I inject a double superphosphate, calimagnesia, prolonged-action fertilizer, azofosca and 2 biofungicide tablets into the well, despite the fact that some of these fertilizers (except for azofosca) I have already introduced into the ridge in late autumn. The granules introduced in the spring will act after the fertilizers that have swelled up in the fall period work because they dissolve very slowly and slowly.

CARE OF CUCUMBERS IN GREENHOUSE

Planted in a greenhouse, watered with warm water. Above each plant I stick arcs from a thick wire, into which I lay several layers of dense non-woven material to protect the plants from night frosts. Promise frost? On top of the covering material, I wrap up the old coat. Once under such cover, my hardened cucumbers withstood a drop in temperature in the street at night to minus 10 °, and in another year the young plants survived in the greenhouse 5 recurrent frosts, and in the most extreme of them the temperature also dropped to minus 10 °.

IT IS INTERESTING. Heat-loving cucumbers, when grown from "birth" at low temperatures, can carry night frosts under cover.

Experience has shown: my efforts have not been wasted. After the first experiment on quenching seedlings 3 ripe cucumbers, we removed from plants hybrid Masha already 17 May. And from that time they began to bear fruit abundantly. 19 May, the first cucumbers were removed from hybrids Herman and Magdalena. All of them were sown 15 March. The second batch of seedlings seeded 2 April and planted 14 April, began to bear fruit for 10 days later.

In sunny weather at 12 h, my parents living in the country house throw back the spon-bond so that the land in the ridges is heated, and in 17 h again close. So on the beds keeps warm. In cloudy weather, cucumbers are closed all day. I water them seldom, as the soil dries up, and only in 13 h, with necessarily warm water.

I begin to do liquid dressing only at the beginning of May - once every 10 days, and in the summer - once a week. In cold weather, they are of no use: they act only when the air and soil in the greenhouse are warm and there are no significant differences between day and night temperatures.

I remove the lower flowers on the plants in the 4 axils of the leaf. You can’t give them so early to bear fruit - they should grow roots and green mass faster.

How many cucumbers can grow at the same time at the site? Initially, all plants had 1-2 cucumber, and later, when warmed, already on 6-7. On the lashes that appeared from the sinuses (I left them on 2 sheet, the rest deleted) there was a huge amount of cucumbers, while on non-hardened plants in the past years they were usually on 2-3.

In the midst of fruiting, crops broke all records. The number of cucumbers on plants could not be counted! On the side lashes in each sinus there were more than 13 pieces of different sizes - these were only visible, and the rest were still inside the brush. And this despite the fact that on bags with seeds it was written that these hybrids with sufficient nutrition are able to form 6-7 fruits per node. Mine gave out more than two times more!

IT IS INTERESTING.

With a good hardening of cucumber plants from "birth," you can get record harvests. So, it is not necessary to plant a lot of bushes, a place will be freed for other crops, which is important in small areas.

The past summer was cold, but my cucumbers did not care. Poured them in the greenhouses infrequently and only slightly warm water. Twice a week, I necessarily removed the fading flowers from the fastened cucumbers (by the way, and from tomatoes too), otherwise they started to rot, and they could also rot themselves fruits. This is not a rare phenomenon in greenhouses at low ambient temperatures outside.

In early September, the lower part of the plants, as a rule, is already bare (I remove the lower leaves and the prolific side lashes). I do not pinch a few side lashes in the upper part of the plant, but leave them to get a crop in the autumn. When they reach the roof of the greenhouse, I let them in different directions. Cucumbers are fruiting here until mid-October - until the first frost.

You can continue to extend fruiting. It is necessary to cover the ground under the plants with a black spunbond and gently lay on it the cucumbers taken from the cords of the whip, and cover them with a tight white spunbond at night. At this time I water the cucumber rarely, as the earth dries up in autumn, and even under cover, slowly. Let the sun is small and cucumbers are not so delicious, but still they are much better than purchased.

---

See also:  The earliest cucumbers in an unheated greenhouse

---

Cultivating Cucumbers - DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS: VIDEO

© Author: O.Rubtsova

---

ON THE NOTE: CUCUMBERS-2, OR EASIER THAN SEEMS

After planting cucumber seedlings to relax early. It is necessary to plant new bushes in the place dropped out and properly take care of them. Only this will give a good harvest.

I am committed to the trellis system of growing and vertical garter. I tried to grow cucumbers and grew, but the technology did not look. Than? After heavy rain, the stems, leaves, fruits - everything is dirty with dirt and dries for a long time. Zelentsy from the side of the earth are clarified, colored not evenly. And after “digging” the crop, the leaves often turn upside down, and the side of the leaf that has not seen the sun receives a sunburn. As a result, diseases on such plantations appear faster than with trellis cultivation, and the presentation of Zelentsy leaves much to be desired.

I grow mainly hybrids that do not require pollination - German, Meringue, Masha, Actor, Dolomite, Danila, Real Colonel, Heroic Power, etc. They do not have empty flowers, but they also need to be formed.

Buds and rudiments of lateral shoot appear in the sinus of each leaf. Therefore, the first 4 node I mercilessly blind. And after that, I tie the bushes and, as the heat comes, I cover the warmed earth with a dry top of the siderata dried with grass. I shed the planting in the furrows left after hilling (at a distance of 15 cm from the stem). Watering under the root of non-

It is desirable: the place of contact of the stem with the ground should always be dry. This is the best protection against root rot. I also delete the leaves touching the ground.

For garters of plants I use metal square pipes of not less than 2 m in height. I slaughter them to a depth of 50 cm parallel to the planted plants at a distance of 2,5 m from each other. The top of the pipes connect the 6-meter board, getting a U-shaped design.

The lower level of the fastening is also made of wood. For this, I make a hole in the pipe and a length of about 8 cm in the pipe, I attach another board to the pipe behind it. On a bed length of 10 m, 4 supports and 2 boards are required.

Stepping back 33 cm from the butt, I tie a strong cord to the board and lower it to the ground, wrapping around with a free loop around it

plants. Later, once a week, I twist the plant over the cord.

Side shoots of cucumbers are also not barren. If they are not pinched in time, they can outgrow the central shoot, which will adversely affect yields.

Every 10 days I feed the beds with cucumbers. For root dressings I use infusion of chicken manure, herbs. Foliar - by any water-soluble fertilizer with trace elements (according to the instructions) with the addition of a few drops of the drug HB-101. Foliar top dressing almost instantly gives plants the missing trace elements in the ground, and HB-101 acts as an antistressant and growth stimulant.

During the season I watch that the foliage does not touch the ground, I remove suspicious and sick leaves. However, this does not always save you. If plants need treatment from diseases or pests, then first of all I remove all the greenery up to 4-centimeter pickles. And the newly grown ones are processed and before canning I soak about 4 h.

Gathering the greens, you can not tolerate their overgrowth: the length of the fruit of most varieties or hybrids should not exceed the width of the male palm.

If there were no diseases during the season, then after harvesting in early September, I lay out the tops of the cucumber in the middle of the garden, where there will be tomatoes next year. And I sow the empty place of the ridge with a mixture of siderates - fatseliya, rape, oil radish.

© Author: I. SIMBIREV

ORDER QUALITY AND CHEAP SEEDS AND OTHER PRODUCTS FOR HOME AND COTTAGE. PRICES ARE BOTTLE. CHECKED! JUST LOOK FOR YOURSELF AND BE AMAZED. THERE ARE REVIEWS. GO >>>

Below other entries on the topic "Dacha and garden - with their own hands"

---

Subscribe to updates in our groups and share.

Let's be friends!