Good afternoon, my reader. Cultivating cucumbers on a windowsill differs little from growing them in an open field or greenhouse. You just need to equip the place where the planting container will stand, and provide the plant with the necessary conditions.
Please put your likes and subscribe to the channel "About Fasenda". This will allow us to publish more interesting garden articles.
Preparing for landing
For the successful cultivation of cucumbers in an apartment, good lighting and an air temperature of at least 17-18 ° C are necessary. And in order for them to grow by the New Year, you need to choose the right seeds, planting capacity and soil.
Seeds
Only parthenocarpic (self-pollinated) hybrids are suitable for growing at home, in which all flowers are female (with an ovary). Usually, manufacturers indicate on the packaging that the crop is suitable for growing on a balcony or windowsill.
These hybrids are distinguished by compact bushes with medium-sized leaves, fruits and short internodes. Before others ripen:
- Balcony miracle F1;
- Machaon F1;
- City gherkin F1;
- Balagan F1 and others.
The fruits of these varieties are distinguished by their high presentation and excellent taste.
Landing capacity
For cultivating cucumbers in an apartment, any containers (boxes) with a volume of at least 4-5 liters for each bush are suitable. They do not need to be deep, since the roots of the cucumbers develop in breadth, not in depth.
Suitable soil
The easiest way is to purchase soil for melons in the store or universal soil for indoor flowers. But if you decide to set up a whole garden on the balcony, then it will be cheaper to prepare the soil yourself. To do this, you need to take in equal shares:
- sod land;
- humus;
- compost.
To these components, add wood ash and coarse gravel. Before planting seeds, the soil mixture should be disinfected by sprinkling it with boiling water and a weak solution of potassium permanganate.
After these procedures, all soil microflora dies, incl. and useful. Therefore, to restore it (a week before sowing seeds in the ground), it is advisable to treat it with a biological product "Baikal EM1".
Planting and leaving
To harvest the first harvest of cucumbers for the New Year holidays, you need to plant them no later than mid - late November. Untreated seeds can be soaked - in this case, seedlings appear a few days earlier.
The bottom of the container is lined with a drainage layer of expanded clay (pebbles) and filled with a soil substrate. Seeds are placed in the soil moistened with a spray gun to a depth of 1.5-2 cm, maintaining an interval of 30-35 cm. To create a greenhouse effect, the container is covered with glass or plastic wrap.
The planting container must be kept warm before germination, at a temperature of 23-25 ° C. When the first leaves appear, it can be assigned to a permanent place. However, good lighting is necessary for the normal development of the bushes. Therefore, you have to use a phytolamp to increase daylight hours to 10-12 hours a day.
The air temperature should not fall below 18-22 ° С. Watering is carried out as the soil dries up with water at room temperature. After the appearance of 3-4 true leaves, the plants are fed twice a month with complex mineral fertilizers.
It is not difficult to grow cucumbers indoors. If you provide this thermophilic culture with proper care, then the New Year can be met with the first harvest of home vegetables.
Have you tried growing cucumbers on the windowsill, balcony, loggia?
Original articleand many other materials, you can find on ourwebsite.
Read also about feeding strawberries in the following article:Feeding strawberries during flowering for a good harvest