Good afternoon, my reader. To grow a strong and healthy plant that will bear fruit well, the gardener should know how to properly prepare the seeds for planting. It will be necessary to carry out several procedures aimed at disinfecting the planting material and accelerating its germination.
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Rejection of low-quality seeds
The available seeds are sorted, selecting the largest and most beautiful specimens for planting without damage.
Filling it with slightly salted water will help to reject low-quality material. Floated seeds are not suitable for sowing. The rest will need to be dried.
Heat treatment
Before sowing, the seeds should be warmed up to disinfect. To do this, they are poured into a gauze bag, put in a thermos with hot water (temperature from +50 ⁰C to +52 ⁰C) and left there for 20 minutes. For eggplants and beets, the heating time is increased to 25 minutes, for tomatoes - up to half an hour.
At the end of the manipulation, the seed is washed for 2 minutes with cold water.
Etching procedure
For this purpose, the planting material is dipped into a weakly concentrated solution of potassium permanganate (1% or 2%).
In a liquid with a potassium permanganate content of 1%, the seed of such crops is etched for 45 minutes:
- Luke;
- radish;
- salad;
- tomatoes;
- beans;
- corn.
In a more concentrated solution, the seeds of such vegetables are dipped for 20 minutes:
- eggplant;
- peppers;
- carrots;
- cabbage;
- pumpkins.
At the end of the procedure, you will need to rinse the seeds with cool water.
Suitable for etching and solutions of drugs like "Fundazol", "Baytan", "Raxil".
Soaking
The seed is soaked using melt or rainwater for this purpose. The procedure promotes better germination.
Soaking times for different garden crops differ:
- beans - 7 hours;
- tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage - 19 hours;
- onions - 35 hours.
It is advisable to enrich the water in which the planting material is soaked with "Epin", "Humat".
Upon completion, the seed needs to be dried a little.
Hardening
Hardening the seeds will help make the plants more cold-resistant.
First, the seed is soaked in a gauze bag, and then left for 12 hours in a room with a temperature of +15 ⁰C to +20 ⁰C. Then the seeds are moved to the refrigerator (temperature - from +1 ⁰С to +3 С) for 12 hours.
Saturation with nutrients
A few days before planting, it is advisable to lower the seed into an ash infusion (2 tbsp. l. ash per 100 ml of water). The measure will contribute to the saturation of seeds with minerals. It is enough to hold the planting material in the nutrient liquid for 4 hours.
Oxygen saturation
It makes sense to resort to the bubbling procedure (enrichment of seeds with oxygen) in order to accelerate the emergence of seedlings. To carry it out, you need to buy special equipment. You can also use a compressor for an aquarium.
Stratification procedure
Some garden crops require cold to germinate. Stratification is carried out by placing the seed in a container filled with sand and leaving it in the refrigerator. You can also bury the seed in the snow mass and leave it for 14 days. Sometimes the planting material is kept under the snow for several months.
Scarification
Manipulation involves breaking the outer shell of the seed for faster germination. For this purpose, the surface of the seeds is rubbed with sandpaper.
Not all of the listed seed pre-treatment procedures are required. In most cases, it is sufficient to limit yourself to sorting, soaking and pickling.
Do you know how to prepare seeds for sowing?
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