Tomatoes are one of the most loved and sought-aftervegetables. In our region, tomatoes can be grown exceptionally in seedlings because of the plant's too long growing season and a short summer. Therefore, the cultivation of tomato seedlings begins in January-March: in January and February, tomatoes are planted in late-ripening varieties, and in March - early and mid-ripening varieties. And if you want to get a good harvest at your dacha, you need to know how to grow tomato seedlings. Seeds of this culture can be purchased in orchards, nurseries and specialized stores. When planting seeds, it is necessary to disinfect the windowsill or the place where you will grow seedlings. Because if there were houseplants on the windowsill, it is necessary to do this in order to avoid the transmission of seedlings of diseases.
Capacities
For growing seedlings ideal containersare cassettes that are easy to use, store and transport. But if they do not exist, tomato seedlings as a container are suitable for disposable paper and plastic cups, plastic bottles that need to cut off the top, and in general any plastic containers from food. They need to make drainage holes at all, through which excess water will flow out during irrigation. Choose containers so that they do not tilt steadily on the pallet. The pans are suitable as pans, usual plastic trays, photocells and so on.
Seed preparation
Seeds of tomatoes before sowing should be checked forgermination, while sorting them and removing the smallest. Then they must be prepared for a period of growth that is complex for the plant in a small container on the windows, temperature drops and various diseases. This training accelerates germination. Preparation includes heating, disinfection and germination or disinfection, germination and hardening. The seeds can be heated on heating radiators, under a lamp or in an oven for two to three days. Must be disinfected seeds. It should be taken into account that such manipulations must be made only with seeds purchased from other truck farmers. Garden centers sell already disinfected and heated seeds. To prevent the emergence of transmitted through the seeds of disease, they are disinfected, dropping the change in tissue bags into a concentrated solution of potassium permanganate. It must be cherry colored. A solution of brown color can burn the seeds. They are kept in the solution for fifteen minutes, and then washed with water. Large and small seeds should be planted separately.
Substrate preparation
To grow a healthy seedling tomato,a good nutritive soil is necessary - porous, friable, moisture-tight and breathable. It must be processed to rid of weeds, pests and pathogens. This is done by warming up or steaming. For steaming to the bottom of the bucket put a wide metal jar with punched holes in it. The bank should be such that the whole bottom is closed. A little water is poured into the bucket, and soil is poured into the jar. Then the bucket is covered with a lid and put on fire, steaming the ground for forty minutes. Steaming can be replaced by straining the soil mixture in boxes or pots, and this must be a hot solution of potassium permanganate. After such treatment, the soil is heavily compacted, and it should be thoroughly dried and loosened. Earth mixture for seedlings tomato can be done by yourself. To do this, you can take 75% of peat, 20% of sod land and 5% of mullein. Another composition: 45% of the rotten compost or manure, 50% of the sod land and 5% of the mullein. You can make a mixture of 75% peat, 20% horse manure without straw and 5% mullein. Mullein is put in pots for density. When growing seedlings in glasses, boxes or clay pots Mullein do not use. To reduce the acidity of the substrate, ash, chalk or lime is added to it - somewhere a handful on the bucket. Do not forget about mineral fertilizers. When growing seedlings, 15-20 grams of ammonium nitrate, 4-6 grams of potassium chloride and 20-25 grams of superphosphate are added to the nutritional formula, based on the bucket of the earth mix. In addition, you can grow tomato seedlings in peat tablets, which are already sold in garden centers.
Sowing
For many gardeners, the problem is when sowingon the seedling seed tomato. Unequivocally, you can not answer it, because everything should be taken into account here: variety, climatic region, periods of frosts, etc. In principle, it can generally be done several times a season. But from the date of planting seedlings in the soil will depend on the seed sowing time - the later it is necessary to plant the seedlings, the later it is necessary to sow the seeds. If you have a greenhouse or a greenhouse on the site, then, of course, and plant the seeds earlier, because further the seedlings will grow under protection before landing in the ground. Gradually, you will gain your own experience, when it is better to sow seeds, recording several years in a row the seeding time, the time before emergence, then the appearance of the first leaves and the beginning of flowering. For approximate calculations, the following figures can be cited: from the moment when the first shoots appeared, and before the beginning of flowering, early varieties need 50-60 days. Before the emergence of the sprouts themselves, 7-10 days will pass, plus about a week for adaptation after picking seedlings. Therefore, if you plan to plant seedlings in a greenhouse or greenhouse in early June, then the seeds of the tomato should not be planted on seedlings until about mid-to-late March. The summer residents in the northern regions will also have to consider the duration of the daylight hours in April-May. There seedlings grow and develop faster. The optimum temperature regime for growing seedlings should be as follows:
- 14-18 ° C - on a sunny day;
- 12-16 ° C - overcast;
- 10-14 ° C - at night.
Twice the temperature will need to be reduced:
- after the shoots appear for 4-7 days so that they do not stretch very much;
- for one and a half to two weeks before landing in the ground in order to season the seedlings.
In the last days before planting seedlingsthe temperature of the content is generally reduced to the outside temperature. Ready-made seedlings of early and mid-ripe varieties of tomatoes, ideal for planting, have a height of 35-40 centimeters, a blossoming first brush and a developed root system. In order to ensure the first conditions, the container for growing seedlings should not be small. Its volume should be 0,8-1,5 liters. When filling the soil with pots, it must be compacted near the walls, otherwise it will start to move away from the pots when further watering, which is very harmful for young roots. They begin to dry up, because the water evaporates very quickly in this case. If this happens, then in these pots it is worth pouring the soil and slightly compact it. This should be done during the entire period of growth of seedlings. 
Picks
It is preferable to grow seedlings with picking. For this, seeds are first sown in low boxes of 8-10 centimeters in height. In a box pour the earth and allow it to stand for several days so that the soil has settled. Then, in the ground, grooves are drawn every 3-4 centimeters, the depth of which should be 2-3 centimeters. Furrows smaller than 2 cm do not be worth it, since shoots can appear with out-set seed membranes, which is undesirable. In this case, they will have to be moistened hourly with water, so that the cotyledonous leaves can discard them. You can remove such "caps" with a needle. The grooves are laid out prepared seeds at a distance of 0.5 cm from each other. You can water the soil in the box both before and after sowing. After that, the container is covered with glass or polyethylene film and placed before emergence of the shoots in a warm place where the temperature is not lower than 20-25 ° C. You can sow the seeds of tomatoes in another way. To do this, pour in the prepared capacity for incomplete height, ground, level. Then lay the seeds and fall asleep on top of an even layer of soil a half to two centimeters thick, watered from above, then covered and put in heat. When the first one or two present leaflets appear, it is necessary to hold a picking-planting of shoots in a separate container. When picks, the sents are not pulled out of the ground, but poddevayut under the roots from below with a small clod of earth a small spatula or spoon. To make it easier to make the land watered so that the soil is soaked to the full depth, but the plants did not have time to use this water. If the stems of the tomato are too stretched, then the cotyledon leaves before picking are cut, allowed to dry, and then a part of the stalk is spiraled into the lunettes until the first real leaf. Around the potted plant, the soil is compacted and poured with warm water, and then placed for two or three days in a shaded area, especially if it is sunny weather these days. Sometimes, to avoid unnecessary stretching of seedlings, you can make a double pick. First time sprout sprouts in a small container up to 200ml, and the second time - in a liter. Each time during the picking, the lower part of the stem is laid in a hole in a spiral, cutting off a pair of leaves in order to shorten the seedlings. Plants after such a double transshipment become more chunky, and their root system is much better developed.
Stalking sprouts
After the appearance of the first shoots, the container withseedlings are exposed to a bright but cool place where the temperature should be 15 ° C in the daytime and at night not more than 11 ° C. It can be a glazed balcony or a place at the door of a balcony. Some summer residents even put them on the lower shelf of the refrigerator. Such a procedure is necessary for seedlings, so that they do not stretch too much. If the temperature is higher, then the saplings, stretching quickly, may fall ill with a black leg. To strengthen the subclavicular knee, tiny seedlings are enough for four to five days, and now it can be prepared for the next stage - to be moved to a warmer place, where the temperature will be 20-24 ° C in the daytime and 12-15 ° C at night.
Watering
Frequent watering is conducive to the fact that seedlingsstrongly stretched. This should be avoided and in order for the water to evaporate less, it is better to lower the temperature of the contents. For watering, water should be defended, but it is better to take thawed or magnetized. It must be heated up. Once every two weeks, water the seedlings with a weak solution of potassium permanganate. This solution will not only disinfect the soil and plant, but also feed it with manganese and potassium. Sprouts should be watered in the morning so that there is no excessive humidity during the night. It should be borne in mind that the air in the apartments with central heating is very dry, which does not benefit the plants. Therefore, you need not only to water the plants, but also to moisten the surrounding air, for which simply put jars of water next to the seedlings. For the same purpose, you can moisten the air from the sprayer or hang a wet gauze next to it.
Transplantation into the greenhouse
Somewhere in the end of April, depending on the areaLiving seedlings can be placed in a nursery on biofuel or in a greenhouse. This is for her an ideal option, and seedlings in this case are literally transformed. It becomes dense, stocky, dark green with close interstices. In the greenhouse, as long as the soil has not warmed up, seedlings can be installed on a wooden flooring or shelving.
Additional fertilizing
During the cultivation of more than three dressingsseedlings do not. For this, one glass of fertilizer solution will suffice for the seeded seedlings for 8-10 plants, the same volume is poured onto the four older plants for the older seedlings. You can water and a less concentrated solution, half diluting it with water. In this case, the amount of fertilizing will simply be doubled. But this option is no worse. For the growth and development of plants should be constantly observed, noticing all the changes and taking quick measures. The slowdown in growth and development is often caused by a lack of an element, excess moisture, cold soil, a beginning illness or pests.
- If the plants look stunted, the leavespale green, small, and the stem is thin, then plants do not have enough nitrogen. With excess nitrogen, the seedlings "live": the petioles and stem are thick, and the dark green leaves are of large size.
- If plants do not have enough phosphorus, a violet-red hue appears on the leaves, and chlorosis on the lower leaves.
- If the plant lacks potassium, then the edges and ends of the lower leaves turn yellow. In tomato seedlings, leaves can spin down at the same time.
