Novice gardeners will be delighted to hear that tomatoes and peppers can be grown together - both are nightshade crops. The bad news is that these vegetables love to be capricious - even their seedlings are not so easy to care for. Let's figure out together how to please the minions and grow healthy and strong bushes that can survive a transplant in open ground.
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How to prepare planting material
First of all, you should check if the manufacturer has processed the seeds for you - information about the procedures carried out with the planting material can be found on its packaging. If the seeds have indeed been disinfected beforehand, they should not be re-processed. You should also refuse to rinse the grains.
If the planting material has not been processed, you will have to "conjure" over it yourself. The seeds should be soaked in a growth promoter. You can, for example, turn to the help of the drug "Malyshok", a product specially developed for nightshade crops. Before use, the fertilizer must be diluted with water (5 milliliters per 1 liter) - in the resulting mixture, the seeds should be kept soaked for 12 hours. After this time, the planting material can be considered completely ready for sowing - it does not need to be washed or frozen.
How to sow seeds for seedlings
In order for the seedlings to grow healthy and easily endure the future "move" to the beds, you should take care of purchasing high-quality soil in advance. No matter how nutritious the land from the garden may be, its use should be flatly abandoned - untreated soil is capable of harboring the larvae of dangerous insects and harmful bacteria. In addition, sensitive seedlings may find garden soil too acidic.
It is best to visit a specialized store and purchase ready-made soil or its components. A soil mixture consisting of sand and peat diluted with dolomite flour and mixed with a complex mineral fertilizer is suitable for nightshades. It is with such soil that seedling pots should be filled.
For peppers, it is better to stock several separate containers with a diameter of 8-10 centimeters. Tomatoes can be grown in one large box - it is only important not to thicken the planting and leave a distance of 1.5-2 centimeters between the seeds when sowing.
In order not to injure the seeds when planting, you can use a special technique:
- Fill the pots with earth.
- Water and compact the soil.
- Spread the seeds on the surface of the soil and cover with a layer of dry earth.
How to care for seedlings
Tomatoes and peppers are light-loving plants - deprived of the opportunity to bask in the sun for 12-14 hours every day, they weaken and die. If you live in the middle lane, it will be quite difficult to provide such a regime. It is best not to rely on natural light alone and surround the seedlings with several table lamps.
The first feeding should be carried out after the young plants are a little stronger and grow at least one large leaf. Here, too, you can turn to the help of the drug "Malyshok" - no longer a growth stimulator, but a complex fertilizer. To prepare a nutrient solution, 2.5 milliliters of the drug should be diluted in a liter of purified water. With the resulting product, seedlings need to be watered at the root for 7-10 days. Fertilizer consumption should be 100 milliliters per bush.
After the tomatoes and peppers are decorated with three leaves, foliar dressings should be added to the list of procedures. You can use the same "Baby" for them - only you need to dilute the drug with not one, but two liters of water.
Solanaceae will not refuse the help of such industrial fertilizers as "Krepysh", "Effect" and "Ideal". It is not forbidden to use products prepared by yourself. When the shoots grow two leaves each, they can be fed with a solution prepared from 3 grams of superphosphate, 1 gram of potassium sulfate and 0.5 grams of ammonium nitrate, diluted in 10 liters of water. It is recommended to repeat the procedure after two weeks.
A week before planting in open ground, the plants should be fed with an infusion of wood ash (15 grams per liter of water). It is better not to water the bushes for the last 2-3 days before transplanting - their leaves and stems will slightly twitch, but this will make them more elastic and help to survive the "move" safe and sound. Immediately after transplanting, tomatoes and peppers should be watered abundantly and protected from the sun with a spunbond or an old umbrella. After a few days, you can get rid of the protection.
Do you know how to grow tomato and pepper seedlings?
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