Many summer residents have to deal with failures in the cultivation of tomatoes, both at the planting and care stages. To avoid problems, you should consider 11 mistakes when growing tomatoes that beginner vegetable growers make.
Please put your likes and subscribe to the channel "About Fasenda". This will allow us to publish more interesting garden articles.
Preparatory work
To grow healthy tomato bushes and get a harvest, you must exclude the following steps:
- Thoughtless purchase of planting material. Before buying seeds, you should decide which tomatoes to grow. If bulk cultivation is planned, then hybrids are chosen. They practically do not get sick and provide a yield that is 25-30% higher in comparison with varietal tomatoes. But a complete rejection of varietal seeds is not recommended, since the fruits have good taste.
- Incorrectly selected footprint. Do not plant greenhouse varieties in open ground, and vice versa. Neglecting this rule, gardeners get a small crop - there is a lot of space for low varieties in the room, and conditions are not suitable for greenhouse hybrids in an open bed. Plant growth is disrupted by sudden temperature changes. High air humidity causes poor pollination.
- Wrong choice of greenhouse film. The thickest polyethylene is not suitable for a greenhouse. It is better to use an unstabilized hydrophilic film, on the surface of which condensation forms in the form of flat drops. As a result, moisture does not drip onto the plants, but flows down the coating. Another advantage of the second version of the material is the presence of antistatic additives in the composition, which tend to repel dust. The moisture that remains on the inside of the film does not allow the material to cool down much at night.
- Organization of lighting 24 hours a day, maintaining high temperatures. To create favorable conditions in the greenhouse, it is necessary to maintain the temperature up to + 10 ° C at night and illuminate the seedlings 15 hours a day.
This approach allows for strong, healthy tomato seedlings.
Planting works
Even having grown good seedlings, you can ruin it if you make the following mistakes:
- Incorrect disembarkation. You should avoid buying seedlings with mature inflorescences. It will not provide an early harvest. When such a plant is transplanted into the ground, the inflorescences are removed on it and new roots are grown. Abundant watering is recommended on the eve of disembarkation. If you water the seedlings 1-2 days before the procedure, then the stems will fill with juice and become brittle. For planting, you need to prepare a hole and pour a lot of water into it so that dirt forms. So the tomatoes will quickly take root. Planting in holes with insufficient moisture and subsequent surface watering leads to the formation of a crust on the ground and the death of plants.
- Organization of daily watering. Tomatoes need to be irrigated rarely, once a week, but abundantly, avoiding moisture on the foliage. Otherwise, the air humidity in the greenhouse will increase, and late blight will develop.
- Late pinching. The stepsons are removed when the shoot grows to a maximum of 5 cm. The stepson is pinched off, stepping back from the base by 1 cm, so that a new one does not form at the site of the remote shoot.
- Incorrect bush formation scheme. If you do not remove excess side shoots in time or pinch the top, then the bush will be lush, but with minimal fruiting.
- Fertilization errors. If the tomatoes are fed with manure, then the shoots will become powerful, and the leaves will be large, but there will be few fruits on the bushes. It is necessary to fertilize plants with magnesium in time, with a lack of which the tissue on the leaves between the veins becomes dark. In this case, spraying with a 0.5% solution of magnesium sulfate will help.
- Refusal of preventive treatment. The prevention of diseases and pests must be carried out without fail. In greenhouses, it begins after planting the shoots.
- Harvesting of planting material for hybrids. Hybrid fruits are not suitable for seed harvesting. Varietal tomatoes are used for this purpose.
Do not despair if in the first year of growing tomatoes the results do not meet expectations. Over time, experience will appear and an optimal cultivation scheme will be developed.
Original articleand many other materials, you can find on ourwebsite.
Please put your likes and subscribe to the channel "About Fasenda". This will allow us to publish more interesting garden articles.
Read more:Choosing the right rake for your lawn, garden and backyard