Every summer resident wants fresh vegetables to appear on the table as soon as possible, and fragrant crispy cucumbers become especially attractive. To get an early harvest of cucumbers, many grow them through seedlings.
Seedlings of cucumbers
However, novice gardeners often face difficulties in this matter and instead of strong seedlings they get sickly goners who refuse to bear fruit. Let’s understand the preferences of this crop and find out how to grow excellent seedlings of cucumbers.
Terms of planting
The key to obtaining good seedlings of cucumbers is the correctly calculated timing of planting seeds. It’s easy to calculate them. To do this, you need to start from the age of seedlings ready to move to the garden – this is 25-30 days. We add another 3-6 days to them, which will take the seeds to germinate (this interval depends on whether you will subject the seeds to pre-sowing treatment or plant them dry).
Cucumber seedlings are ready for planting in the ground a month after planting
After that, you need to brush up on the spring weather conditions in your area over the past few years and decide when you can transplant the seedlings into open ground or a greenhouse.
It is worth remembering that this heat-loving crop will not endure return frosts (in open ground), will stop growing at temperatures below +15Β°C, and thermometer readings with marks below +10Β°C, which are observed for more than 2-3 days, will start irreversible processes in plant tissues. Therefore, it is necessary to plant seedlings in the garden only with the advent of sustainable warmingwhen the air temperature in the daytime will be at least + 18 … + 20 Β° Π‘.
Cucumber seedlings are planted in the ground with the advent of sustainable warming
From the estimated date of planting seedlings, we count back the received 4-5 weeks that you will spend on growing cucumber seedlings, and we get the time for sowing seeds for seedlings.
For example, summer residents near Moscow who grow cucumbers in the open field, weather conditions allow planting seedlings in the garden in the middle or end of May, so they start sowing seeds in the second or third decade of April. Owners of unheated greenhouses will be able to please themselves with an earlier harvest of fragrant cucumbers – they plant seeds for seedlings in late March or early April, and the grown seedlings are moved to a greenhouse bed in late April or the first decade of May.
Seed selection
It is much easier to achieve good fruiting from parthenocarpic and self-pollinated varieties and hybrids, since such a phenomenon as an empty flower is extremely rare in them (only in the event of a serious failure in the microclimate or nutrition). But bee-pollinated varieties that form dioecious inflorescences often suffer from this “ailment”.
But bee-pollinated cucumbers have one secret: they yield depends on seed agethat were used for landing. Such cucumbers, when grown from freshly harvested (last year’s) seeds, form infertile bushes with a large number of male inflorescences, which are just called empty flowers.
Do not use freshly harvested seeds of bee-pollinated varieties for planting.
When planting two-year-old seeds, the yield of such plants will be much higher. Ideal for planting – 3-4-year-old seeds. But after 6 years of storage, the germination of cucumber seeds begins to decline, and by the age of 9 they become unsuitable for planting. Therefore, be sure to pay attention to the date of packaging of seeds of bee-pollinated varieties. It is better to put fresh seed in the bins and use it for planting in 1-2 years.
Artificially “aging” fresh seeds of bee-pollinated varieties and increasing the number of female inflorescences responsible for the appearance of the ovary on future bushes can be done using a simple trick. To do this, 1,5-2 months before planting, they need to be wrapped in a fabric bag and hung near the battery, where the temperature will be kept at + 28 … + 30 Β° Π‘.
You will find a wide range of cucumber seeds in our catalog: early and late, for open or closed ground, varieties and hybrids, time-tested and new selections with an amazing set of characteristics.
The choice of containers for planting
By the time the seeds are planted, you should have a suitable container ready. Since this culture is very sensitive to damage to the root system, it is better to immediately plant it in separate containers, bypassing the picking process. Peat pots or plastic cups are suitable for this.
For planting cucumbers, it is better to immediately pick up separate pots.
You can sow the seeds first in compact seedling cassettes. But it is important to remember that as the seedlings grow, you will have to expand the space between them so that they do not touch each other with leaves. Therefore, with this approach, a couple of weeks after planting, you will need to transfer the plants from the cassette cells into separate glasses and place them on the windowsill at the optimal interval.
Cucumbers at the initial stage can be grown in seedling cassettes, and later transferred to larger containers
Soil preparation
When growing cucumber seedlings, the right soil is important. It should be light, loose, air and water permeable (but moisture-absorbing) and contain a sufficient amount of nutrients.
Such a substrate can be purchased at a gardening store. At the same time, preference should be given not to universal soil mixtures, but to soil specially designed for growing seedlings of cucumbers.
Thrifty summer residents can prepare a nutrient soil mixture on their own. To do this, mix in a ratio of 1: 2: 1: 1 soddy land from a deciduous forest, well-ripened humus, peat and coarse sand. On a bucket of such a mixture, you need to add a glass of sifted wood ash, 3 tbsp. spoons of double superphosphate and 1,5-2 tablespoons of potassium sulfate.
For growing seedlings of cucumbers, it is necessary to use a loose fertile soil mixture.
A purchased substrate from a trusted manufacturer does not need to be disinfected, but a self-prepared soil mixture will require mandatory preparation before use. To do this, the soil prepared in the fall can be left for the winter on the street for freezing, or shed with a disinfectant solution shortly before planting the seedlings. An excellent option is the tank mixture of Fitosporin-M and Fitoverma.
Seed treatment before planting
If you purchased cucumber seeds covered with a βmixβ of fertilizers and stimulants, feel free to plant them dry for seedlings – such seed does not require additional processing. But over the usual seeds, it is worth extra care.
First of all, they need to be decontaminated and freed from pathogenic microflora (and the seeds personally collected should be additionally calibrated by selecting full-weight specimens). To do this, the seeds are placed for 20-30 minutes in a strong solution of potassium permanganate, and then washed under running water. An alternative could be a 40% solution of hydrogen peroxide heated to +45 … + 3 Β° C, in which the seeds are kept for 10-15 minutes, or a solution of any fungicide prepared according to the instructions (copper sulfate, “Fundazol”, ” Alirin-B”, “Fitosporin-M”, etc.).
Seeds must be disinfected before planting
After disinfection, the seeds can be slightly dried and planted in a prepared container. But if you want to speed up their pecking and increase the energy of seedlings, it makes sense soak seed in nutrient solution. For its preparation, it is better to use a complex organomineral preparation enriched with microelements. In such a solution, you need to moisten a piece of cotton cloth or gauze, wrap the seeds in it and leave them for a day in a warm place at a temperature of + 26 … 28 Β° C.
Landing
Cucumber seeds are planted in containers filled with 2/3 of the volume of moistened soil. If there is no shortage of seeds, it is better to plant two seeds in each pot, and after germination, leave one of the strongest specimens in the container. When removing a weak sprout, its stem is cut at the level of the soil, and not pulled out with the root, so as not to damage the root system of the plant growing nearby.
Sampling is carried out after the opening of the cotyledons on the seedlings
Seeds are sprinkled with soil with a layer of 1-2 cm, slightly compacted and irrigated with water from a spray bottle. To prevent the soil from drying out, glass can be placed on top of one-dimensional pots, and dissimilar containers must be wrapped with a film.
Care of seedlings
During the period of growing seedlings, it is necessary to reckon with the preferences of this crop and try to create the most favorable conditions for it.
Temperature conditions
A container with planted seeds should be kept at a temperature of +26 … + 28 Β° C until germination. With the advent of seedling loops, the film from the pots must be removed and rearranged on the lightest window sill.
After the sprouts straighten up and open the cotyledon leaves, the temperature in the room must be lowered to + 20 … + 22 Β° C during the day and + 16 … + 18 Β° C at night.
In an excessively warm room, cucumber seedlings are strongly drawn out.
After 13-15 days after full germination, the grown seedlings begin to harden. During this period, they must be gradually accustomed to more significant temperature changes. To do this, you need to slightly open the window on the window where the container is (but avoid drafts), and in favorable street weather, take the plants out onto the balcony, accustoming the plants to a stream of fresh air and direct sunlight.
On the first day, such hardening should last no more than 1-2 hours. Every day the interval of “walk” is gradually increased. At the same time, it is important not to allow the air temperature to drop below +15Β°C. To do this, next to the seedling pots, wherever they are – on the windowsill or on the balcony – there should always be a thermometer.
backlight
In addition to the correct temperature regime, which will not allow cucumber seedlings to stretch out, you need to take care of the presence of additional lighting. Cucumber is a culture of short daylight hours, the duration of which is 10-12 hours. However, these hours should take place in intense sunlight.
Cucumber seedlings need intensive lighting for 10-12 hours a day
Since cloudy weather is often set in spring, you should have lighting devices ready – phytolamps, LED lamps or fluorescent lamps. They illuminate the seedlings in the mornings and evenings in clear weather, bringing the length of daylight hours to optimal values, and in cloudy weather they are left on for the whole day.
Watering
Seedlings of moisture-loving cucumbers need regular watering and maintaining high humidity. In this matter, it is important to adhere to the golden mean and carry out watering at such intervals as to prevent either the strong drying of the earthen clod in pots or its waterlogging. The soil in the containers should always be in a moderately moist state.
A few hours after each watering, it is necessary to carefully loosen the soil in the seedling container to a depth of no more than 1 cm in order to ensure the flow of oxygen to the roots of cucumbers.
Cucumber seedlings will require regular watering and maintaining high humidity in the room
Do not forget daily irrigate the air around the plants with a fine mist sprayer. This is especially true if heating devices continue to work in your apartment during the period of growing seedlings. For spraying in the same way as for root watering, it is necessary to use only settled water at room temperature.
Additional fertilizing
Cucumber seedlings grow intensively and in a month are ready for planting in the ground. Therefore, if you used fertile soil for planting, you can completely refuse to carry out top dressing.
Seedlings grown on a fertile substrate do not need top dressing
But sometimes, even with proper care, seedlings begin to lag behind in development, their leaves lose their intense green color or become covered with yellow spots. The reason for such an unpleasant phenomenon may be a lack of nutrients in the soil, which most often happens to those summer residents who used a purchased substrate of dubious quality for planting (for example, they purchased it not in a specialized store, but in a spontaneous market).
In this case, it makes sense to feed the seedlings with a solution of a complete organomineral preparation enriched with a complex of microelements (Biogumus, Krepysh, Kemira, Gumi, etc.). The nutrient solution must be prepared strictly according to the instructions for the selected preparation and poured into pots on pre-moistened soil.
Extra Tricks
As the seedlings grow, it is necessary to gradually fill the remaining space in the pots with the soil mixture that you used for planting. This technique will give stability to the seedlings and help them form a powerful root system.
The free space in the glasses must be gradually filled with soil
If the transplantation of seedlings into the ground is delayed due to adverse weather conditions, and the plants become clearly cramped in their containers, you need to carefully transfer them, together with an earthen clod, into more spacious pots. The voids between the walls must be filled with nutrient soil, and the seedlings themselves should be buried 2-3 cm into the soil.
A couple of days before landing on the garden treat the seedlings on the leaf with a solution of some kind of adaptogen (“Epin Extra”, “Energen”, “Zircon”, etc.), which will help the plants to endure the coming stressful situation.
With the right approach, in 4-5 weeks you will get strong healthy seedlings of cucumbers.
These simple tricks will help you get excellent seedlings of cucumbers, which by the time of transplantation will have a thick stocky stem and 4-5 true leaves of a rich green hue. And cucumbers, which were surrounded by care and attention in their βinfancyβ, will certainly want to thank their owner with a generous harvest of fragrant crispy greens.
You may also find the following posts helpful:
