Cucumbers came to us from India -tropical region, so they are heat-loving, moisture-loving and light-loving, especially in the early stages of development. Of course, they will grow even with a lack of light, heat and moisture, but then their development slows down greatly, and the harvest is greatly reduced. Therefore, if you want to get an early harvest of cucumbers, you should know how to properly grow cucumber seedlings. The root system of this vegetable crop is very vulnerable, so in order not to injure it during picking, it is better to grow cucumber seedlings in peat-humus pots, paper or plastic cups, and not in seedling boxes. The technology for growing cucumber seedlings is the same for both open ground and greenhouses. Only the planting dates differ. In this case, the composition of the soil mixture is of great importance. A mixture consisting of turf soil, decomposed peat, manure humus and river sand or old sawdust in a ratio of 3:3:3:1 is good for cucumbers. Three to four tablespoons of ash, one teaspoon of urea and one tablespoon of superphosphate should be added to a bucket of the mixture, then thoroughly mixed. If there are no old sawdust, then to prepare the mixture, fresh sawdust should be doused with boiling water two or three times in order to wash off the resinous substances. Many gardeners also prefer to heat-treat the mixture by frying, steaming or dousing it with boiling water. But some experts consider these methods controversial, because along with pathogenic microbes, the microflora useful for plants is also destroyed. To grow cucumber seedlings, you can also use such an excellent, but inexpensive soil: ready-made soil for cucumbers "Sadovnik" mixed with biohumus and aged sawdust in a ratio of 2:1:2. Soil "Sadovnik" can be replaced with other ready-made soils, for example, "Ogorodnik", "Krepysh", "Special-2" or "Flora". Before sowing, cucumber seeds must be prepared, and to the stage of swelling, not germination. Of course, if they are germinated, they will rise faster, but cucumber sprouts are very brittle, fragile. And it is difficult to store sprouted seeds if you do not have the opportunity to sow them right away. And with swollen seeds there are no problems - they can be perfectly stored on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Cucumber seeds in general conceal a lot of surprises. From practice it is known that the age of cucumber seeds has a great effect on fruiting. Seeds from last year's harvest produce strong, powerful vines with a large number of male, and therefore sterile flowers. The largest cucumber harvest is obtained from seeds after three years of storage. In addition, the fertility of seeds is greatly affected by the conditions of their winter storage. Well-dried seeds stored in a dry and warm place in winter produce short but very fertile vines. Seeds stored in a damp and cold place subsequently produce long vines, but with a large number of sterile flowers.
Seed preparation
Let us return, however, to the question of seed preparation.First, it is advisable to warm them up for 10-15 days in the sun or in a bag near a stove or radiator. If the seeds were stored in a cold room, they must be warmed up for at least three days at a temperature of 50 ° C. Many gardeners pour hot water over the seeds in a thermos and keep them there for up to two hours. Such heat treatment helps to increase seed germination, accelerate the growth and development of vines, and increases subsequent yields. Then you can begin preparing the seeds, which begins with sorting. During sorting, shriveled and damaged seeds are removed. This is usually done in a three-percent solution of table salt, soaking the seeds in it. The seeds that float to the top are removed, and the rest are thoroughly washed with running water. Seeds are disinfected in the traditional way - they are etched in a one-percent solution of potassium permanganate or in an infusion of garlic for thirty minutes. After such treatment, the seeds must also be immediately thoroughly washed and then dried. Now they can be used for sowing. An effective way to disinfect seeds is to keep them in aloe juice. To do this, cut aloe leaves are kept in a dark room at a temperature of 20 ° C for five to six days, and then the juice is squeezed out of them. The seeds are placed in undiluted juice so that it covers them, and kept in it for 24 hours. Then the seeds are washed and dried. The next stage of seed preparation is soaking them. It should begin with treating the seeds with growth stimulating agents such as immunocytophyte, epin, gumi, Ideal, etc. Such treatment increases the viability of plants, accelerates fruiting and increases the yield. An equally reliable and at the same time simpler method is to treat the seeds with an extract of wood ash, for which one tablespoon of ash is poured with a liter of water and infused for 24 hours. Most gardeners soak cucumber seeds in clean water slightly above room temperature. It is better to use melted water, or from the freezer. The water temperature is 26-28°C, the soaking time is ten to twelve hours. Often, vegetable growers increase the soaking time until a small sprout appears on the seeds, i.e. the seeds germinate. This usually happens on the third day. But then they must be planted immediately so that the embryo that has started to grow does not die. Swollen or hatched cucumber seeds are often hardened, for which they are kept for three to five days in the refrigerator at a temperature of 0°C, on ice or snow. Hardening can also be done with alternating temperatures: first, the seeds are kept at a temperature of 0°C for twenty hours in the refrigerator, and then four to five hours at room temperature, repeating such cycles two to three times. Another tip: if cucumber seeds have already sprouted, and planting the seeds is suddenly postponed for some reason, then they should be kept at a temperature of 3-4°C in the lower part of the refrigerator.
Seed sowing
Since cucumber seedlings do not tolerate it welltransplantation, then growing cucumbers from seedlings is carried out, as already mentioned above, in polyethylene or paper cups and milk cartons or in peat-humus pots. But the best for these purposes are cylinders made of newspaper without a bottom. To do this, fold the newspaper in four and, wrapping it around the bottle, fasten the edges with paper clips. Remove the cylinder from the bottle and fill it with soil mixture, moistening it with a not very concentrated solution of potassium permanganate, Ideal, and, at worst, with warm water. Prepared seeds are laid out in these peculiar cups directly on the surface and sprinkled with a mixture of no more than one and a half centimeters or sown in furrows to a depth of one and a half to two centimeters. To prevent the seeds from being sucked deep, the soil is sprayed with warm water, and not watered. Then the containers are tightly packed into boxes and placed in a warm greenhouse or on a southern window and covered with polyethylene film. If the temperature is maintained at 25-28°C, the shoots will appear in three to four days. At a lower temperature, this will happen in five to six days. When the shoots appear, you need to remove the film and transfer the seedlings to a well-lit place, and reduce the temperature for two to three days to 17-19°C during the day and 13-14°C at night. This is necessary so that the seedlings do not stretch out. After this, the seedlings' temperature is raised:
- for closed ground - on sunny days to 21-22 ° C, in cloudy weather - up to 19 ° C and at night - up to 16-17 ° C;
- for open ground so that the seedlings do not fade, the temperature is lowered by 1-2 ° C.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to create such things on the windowsillconditions are quite difficult. For example, if cloudy weather continues for a long time, the hypocotyl knee of cucumbers can stretch out greatly even before the formation of real leaves. If this happens, the stem is carefully laid in a ring along the wall of the pot on the soil up to the cotyledon, covered with loose soil mixture by 1.5-2 cm, and then watered. Within a week, this stem will take root, and the plant will become strong and short. During prolonged cloudy weather, seedlings, even on the brightest windowsill, are best illuminated with fluorescent lamps for 10-12 hours a day. When the cotyledon leaves unfold, the seedlings need to be watered with warm, settled water at a temperature of about 30 ° C. If the seedlings are grown in a box, then only seedlings with dark green cotyledons and good root ball are taken for picking. Half an hour before picking, they should be watered generously. At the optimum temperature and good lighting, a true leaf will appear within about a week. If the seedlings were grown in newspaper cylinders, they are placed in a prepared hole that is the same depth as the cylinder, and then soil is added around the newspaper. The newspaper will quickly become soaked, and the roots will grow through it. We recommend reading:
