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Tomatoes and peppers are wonderful vegetables that are present in our diet throughout the year. In the summer we use them fresh, in the winter they canned, dried, dried. Juices, sauces, seasonings are prepared from them, they are frozen. They are remarkable in that everyone can plant them in the garden – a variety of varieties and hybrids allows you to grow peppers and tomatoes in almost any climatic zone. This article is devoted to feeding seedlings, in particular, many are interested in yeast, we will dwell on this issue separately.
What you need to successfully grow pepper and tomato seedlings
Peppers and tomatoes belong to the nightshade family, but their needs are different. In order to better see it, we have compiled a comparative table.
Some points that are not included in the tables should be noted separately:
- Tomatoes like frequent transplants, their root can be pinched, this stimulates the development of lateral roots. Pepper, on the other hand, does not tolerate transplantation very well, and if the root is damaged, it can die altogether.
- Tomatoes are deepened during transplantation, additional roots appear on the stem, which improve the nutrition of the plant. Pepper prefers to be planted at the same depth as before. The part of the stem buried in the ground can rot.
- Tomatoes do not like dense plantings – they need good ventilation, in addition, dense plantings contribute to late blight. Peppers, on the contrary, should be planted closer to each other. Its fruits ripen better in partial shade.
As you can see, these cultures are in many ways similar to each other, but they have significant differences that should not be forgotten.
Feeding seedlings of tomatoes and peppers
Our article is devoted to feeding seedlings of tomatoes and peppers. There are no difficulties here if you have a good idea of what you are doing. Let’s figure it out together.
Why feed plants
We are so scared of herbicides, pesticides, nitrates that sometimes we think that it is better not to feed the plant at all – weeds grow without any fertilizer.
Retreat! Aesop was once asked why cultivated plants are cared for, cherished, but they still grow poorly and die, while weeds, no matter how you fight them, grow again. The wise slave (and Aesop was a slave) replied that nature is like a woman who has married a second time. She tries to take a tidbit from her husband’s children and give it to her children. This is how weeds for nature are children, while cultivated garden plants are stepchildren.
Peppers, tomatoes are plants from another continent where the climate is hot and dry. In nature, these are perennial plants that can develop in the absence of strong winds and mechanical damage into very large plants of several meters in height. Those babies that we grow in gardens, in greenhouses – the fruits of selection, are unlikely to survive without our help.
In addition, the opinion that all fertilizers are harmful is a delusion. Nitrogen is necessary for plants to build green mass, phosphorus – for flowering and fruiting, potassium – for the development of the root system. This is far from the entire spectrum of action of macronutrients, which are nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, but this information should be enough for an amateur gardener.
Trace elements for garden plants are not as important as for perennials – often peppers and tomatoes do not fully feel the consequences of microelement deficiency during their development, besides, they are present in small quantities in the soil itself, in water for irrigation. But their lack leads to many diseases: for example, the same phytophthora develops exclusively against the background of a lack of copper, while it is treated with copper-containing preparations.
General rules
Tomatoes love phosphorus. Peppers love potassium. Neither peppers nor tomatoes like fresh manure and high doses of nitrogen fertilizers. But this applies only to its excess, the correct doses of nitrogen are vital for any plant.
Feeding peppers, tomatoes is best done in the morning. During the day, you can feed the plants only in cloudy weather.
Top dressing is carried out after the seedlings have been moistened. If you pour fertilizer on young sprouts of peppers and tomatoes on dry soil, the tender root can get burned, the plant will most likely die.
Fertilizers are dissolved in soft, settled water with a temperature of 22-25 degrees.
Firstly, watering peppers and tomatoes with cold water is harmful, and secondly, at low temperatures, useful substances are absorbed worse, and at 15 degrees they are not absorbed at all.
Growth stimulants
There are many plant growth stimulants, in particular for seedlings. But if you’ve planted quality seeds in good soil, you don’t need them. Exceptions are natural preparations such as epin, zircon and humate. But they cannot be called growth stimulants – these preparations of natural origin stimulate the plant’s own resources, help them to more easily survive the lack of light, low or high temperature, lack or excess of moisture, and other stress factors, and do not specifically stimulate growth processes.
They should be used even at the stage of preparing seeds for sowing – soaking pepper and tomato seeds. This will help them germinate better, in the future, peppers and tomatoes will be more resistant to the influence of negative factors. Epin can be used to process seedlings on a leaf every two weeks, and humate, a teaspoon of which is poured with a glass of boiling water, then topped up with cold water up to two liters, can be well diluted for watering seedlings.
Other stimulants should not be used. If peppers and tomatoes develop well, they are simply not needed, they can cause stretching, and then lodging and death of seedlings. In addition, treatment with stimulants can cause early bud formation, which will be very inopportune before planting tomatoes and peppers in the ground or greenhouse. In the northern regions, regions with extreme climates or under particularly adverse weather conditions, stimulants may be required at the stage of flowering, fruit set, fruit ripening, but this is not a topic for our conversation.
There is a danger that the seedlings of tomato and pepper were simply treated with preparations similar to the tour – Atlant, Kultar or others. They inhibit the growth of the above-ground part of the plant. This is appropriate for ornamental crops, if we want to get more compact bushes than the varietal characteristics of plants. When used for vegetable crops, these drugs inhibit growth, the seedlings are subsequently forced to catch up with their untreated counterparts, its development is inhibited, the fruits become smaller, and the yield drops. It is better to buy overgrown seedlings or grow them yourself.
Fertilizers for seedlings of tomatoes and peppers
Peppers are fertilized from the moment of planting to landing in the ground 3 times, and tomatoes -2. Let’s say right away that it is best to feed with special fertilizers for each plant. On sale there are drugs for every budget. Of course, it is better to fertilize with Kemira for seedlings, but there are much cheaper preparations of good quality, and often they are suitable for adult plants.
Nitroammofoska, amophoska are good fertilizers, but they are universal, while specialized fertilizers differ in that the manufacturer himself took care to take into account the needs of a particular plant. Naturally, do not sprinkle fertilizer thoughtlessly – read carefully and strictly follow the instructions.
Tomatoes are fed for the first time on the twelfth day after picking with a special fertilizer with a concentration two times lower than recommended for seedlings, with the addition of 1 teaspoon of urea per 10 liters of solution (calculate the required dose yourself). At this time, tomatoes really need nitrogen.
A week later, a second top dressing is carried out either with a special fertilizer, or a teaspoon of amophoska is dissolved in 10 liters of water. If the seedlings develop well, mineral fertilizers can no longer be given before planting. But if necessary, tomato seedlings are fed every two weeks in the same way as the second time.
Pour a tablespoon of superphosphate with a cup of boiling water, let it brew overnight. Top up the solution to 2 liters with water, pour the tomato seedlings over the leaf and soil.
Peppers are fed with special fertilizer for the first time when the first two true leaves appear. The second top dressing is given two weeks after the first, and the third – three days before disembarkation. If you feed peppers with amphoska, prepare a solution, as for tomatoes, only for each liter of solution add a tablespoon of wood ash, poured for 2 hours with a glass of boiling water.
Top dressing with ash seedlings of tomatoes and peppers
If cloudy weather lasts for a long time and seedlings of pepper and tomatoes do not have enough light, this negatively affects the plants, especially shortly before planting in the ground. This is where wood ash can help.
Fill a glass of ash with 8 liters of hot water, let it brew for a day and filter. Water the pepper seedlings over the leaf and into the ground.
If it turned out that you flooded the seedlings, it began to lie down or the first signs of a black leg appeared, sometimes it is enough to powder the soil in the seedling boxes with wood ash.
Fertilizing seedlings of tomatoes and peppers with yeast
Yeast is a wonderful, highly effective fertilizer. In addition, they protect the plant from certain diseases. But they are not suitable for seedlings. Yeast stimulates the growth of the plant, but we do not need elongated sprouts of tomatoes and peppers. Even if the seedlings are lagging behind in development, it is better to accelerate its growth in other ways. It is very good to give yeast top dressing to both peppers and tomatoes after planting in the ground.
Watch a video about feeding seedlings:
