Indoor vegetable gardens, at any time of the year giving a crop of cucumbers, are increasingly popular among city dwellers. Growing organic cucumbers in winter to replenish daily vitamin deficiencies, even without leaving home, is easy enough.
What are the right conditions for growing cucumbers?
Light
Light, heat, humidity – that’s what you need to take care of first of all, growing cucumbers on a windowsill in winter. They are placed in the brightest part of the house, on the east or south window. Weak winter sun can be helped by installing reflectors – mirrors – near the plants. Open rays room cucumber varieties can not stand, not so light-loving. To the duration of lighting in the home, moreover, in winter corresponded to a summer day, that is, at least 11 hours, in the morning and evening include an ordinary incandescent lamp for illumination.
Temperature
For the cultivation of cucumbers acceptable temperature between 18 – 26 ° C, the best – 18 at night and 20 – 22 ° C during the day.
Winter cucumbers are kept on an insulated window, and if on a balcony, only closed and heated. Dangerous drafts. If there is no way to avoid them when airing the house, it is necessary to cover the stems with foil for this time, if possible. The roots are also sensitive to cold so it is advisable, for example, to put some Styrofoam or layers of cardboard under the pots to keep them warm.
Humidity
To create the necessary increased humidity for cucumbers at home, near them constantly keep water in containers with a large evaporating surface. Regular spraying with warm water is useful. Soil humidity – moderate, it is better to water often and sparingly.
Soil and fertilization of the plant
For novice growers, it is easier to buy ready-made soil in the store, but with sufficient skill and the availability of the right components, you can make a suitable substrate yourself at home. The main thing is to ensure that the substrate is fertile and friable. A simple option – growing cucumbers on garden soil mixed with decomposed manure or on turf with humus (1:1). Some practitioners use a more complex composition, including peat, poultry manure, dry leaves for fertility, and the structure is created with river sand, sawdust or coconut shavings. Sources of minerals are chalk, wood ash.
Fertilize cucumbers with a periodicity of 10 days with special complex fertilizers strictly according to the recipe. Instead of purchased funds as a mineral additive can be used as a solution of wood ash (100 g per liter of water, soak for a day), organic fertilizer can be diluted infusion of banana peels. Mineral and organic fertilizers should be alternated.
Proper sowing
You can sow cucumbers at home at any time of the year. In practice, winter cultivation is usually started, focusing on future holidays – in the second half of November or by early February. Seeds are disinfected with a weak solution of manganese solution. It is advisable to harden them: wrap them with a damp cloth and place them in a cool place for 2 – 3 days, and then keep them in a warm place. The procedure improves germination and makes the seedlings more viable.
At home, it is better to germinate seeds before sowing, so as not to take up space with poor quality material. In order for them to give roots, you need to put them on the surface of the soil, warmed with hot water, cover them with damp gauze.
Any container is suitable for sowing, the most convenient for subsequent transplanting are flexible cups from under dairy products. Immerse the seed to a depth of 1 cm, warm water, cover with plastic wrap, kept warm (22 – 25 ° C). The first shoots will show in 3 days.
Sometimes seeds are produced in a pellet form – covered with a protective-nutritive shell, which guarantees good germination, no disinfection or pre-germination is required
Growing and picking seedlings
Sprouts require especially careful care. After removing the film, the humidity must be maintained by spraying. The lack of light in the house should be supplemented with artificial lighting, otherwise the sprouts will pull up sharply and weaken. The same will happen with an excess of heat, the temperature should now be no higher than 22 ° C, it is good if at night will be reduced to 18 °.
At the stage of 3 – 4 leaves, the best specimens are transplanted to a permanent place. Depending on conditions, the number of plants, aesthetic preferences, you can plant cucumbers in boxes, pots, any sufficiently wide containers. Obligatory drainage layer and holes in the bottom. Cucumber root is not long, grows wide in the surface layer. Each plant is enough 5 sq. dm of substrate, which corresponds to about 22 x 22 cm on the surface at 10 cm deep. On a standard windowsill, 5 cucumber plants can thus be planted. The surface of the substrate should be a few centimeters below the edge of the container, because as the root grows, the soil needs to be added periodically.
Transplanting (picking) cucumber sprouts is a very delicate procedure. The stub should be carefully taken out and planted together with a clump of soil, the easiest way to extract the sprouts from a plastic cup, crimping the edges.
Shaping the bush
At home, the plant, especially the plethora, should not be allowed to sprout arbitrarily. Although the tendency to bushiness as a useful trait is taken into account when breeding a greenhouse variety, it is still necessary to form the stems in the apartment. After the formation of the 5th leaf of the sprout, start pruning. The top is removed first. Growth in length slows down, the side branches begin to grow, of them leave only three. Allow them to grow to 10 leaves, again pruning, so that new stems grow from the axils of the leaves.
As a result of proper shaping, two goals are achieved. First, the bush becomes compact and fits comfortably into the limited space of the house. Secondly, proper shaping gives advantage to the side – fruiting branches, thus increasing the yield.
It is important from the start to give the stems on the window the right direction of growth. So that they stretch upwards and not spread sideways, the young stalks are tied to a nearby driven in peg about 70 cm long. At home, the stems, pulled along a stretched twine towards the light, look good. If you have space, you can grow a beautiful fan of cucumber branches, letting them down the twine in different directions from one plant. If you pull a coarse-meshed netting over the window, the cucumber bushes, clinging by their whiskers, will spread out wide over it, slightly shading the window. You can also set up a small homemade ladder for the cucumbers.
Special varieties and hybrids for the home vegetable garden
Choosing a variety for sowing, you need to know that cucumbers, which are suitable for indoor areas (greenhouses and apartments), are different from those that grow in the open air. The choice is quite large, greenhouse varieties and hybrids have been bred a lot. Their important feature is the ability to produce fruit without pollination (parthenocarpy). It is clear how important this is in home conditions, where there is no wind or bees. These varieties are adapted to the delicate room light, in which “garden” cucumbers, those that normally grow in direct sunlight, stunt. When growing vegetables on the window, their precocity is very desirable, the best “home” cucumbers have this quality.
Variety “Foton” begins to bear fruit on the 50th day after sowing, the harvest is abundant – up to 45 fruits from each plant. Hybrid “Voyage F1” gives the first fruits even earlier, on the 40th day. The record-breaker in terms of speed of maturation is hybrid “Molodets F1”, from sowing to maturity of very tasty cucumbers takes only 35 days. “Room Rytov” plant breeders appreciate for the ease of growing, unpretentiousness and resistance to disease. Growing well at home are popular in greenhouses varieties “Masha”, “Amur”, “Marfinsky” and many others. “Marinda F1” and “Crispina F” – imported hybrids, demanding to the conditions of maintenance, but distinguished by exquisite taste and high yield.
