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There are many ways to grow cucumbers, but most of these methods are based on the fact that vegetables are grown in the garden. This is a rather laborious work that takes a lot of time and also space. Everyone would like to spend less time growing cucumbers, the area for planting vegetables was also not large, and the harvest was as large as possible. At first glance it seems that this is impossible, but it is not. The Chinese, oddly enough, manage to do all this by the fact that they use a rather little-known method for growing cucumbers – in barrels.
Growing cucumbers in a barrel is a very interesting and effective way, since from one barrel you can harvest such a crop that will be equal to the harvest harvested from a garden bed 3 meters long.
Method advantages
Now it is worth dwelling in more detail on the advantages of this method. The most important question that interests everyone is how such a rich harvest can be harvested from one barrel? The answer to this question lies in the fact that several plants are located in one barrel and thereby saves space in the garden. It also does not take a lot of time and effort to care for them.
Since a frame is additionally installed to the barrel, on which branches and antennae of cucumbers will twist in the future, the crop will not be on the ground, and therefore it will always be clean. After all, clean vegetables are much more pleasant to collect than those that were in the mud.
Thanks to this method of cultivation, the fruits of plants begin to ripen earlier. And also a good plus of this method is that by the time autumn comes, there will be good humus in the barrel, which can be used in the future.
Cultivation technology
Barrel preparation
As soon as the snow has melted, preparations must begin. The soil for the barrel can be prepared with the most elementary, which, for example, will consist of compost and soil in a 1: 1 ratio. Also, as soil, you can use any raw food waste or grass from last year.
Only this mixture during the process of creating the soil must sometimes be mixed with earth or with manure. When the barrel is full, fertilizer can be added to it in order to eliminate foreign bacteria. After this has been added, often only half of the entire volume of the container remains in the barrel. Therefore, all procedures must be repeated until it is finally complete.
Then, when it’s time to plant the seeds, you need to add another layer of soil about 10-15 cm from above. Next, the soil is scalded or spilled with a mild solution of potassium permanganate. In the garden, the barrels must be installed in such a way that the sun’s rays fall on the cucumbers, because if the plants are in a darkened area, the yield will be lower than the desired level.
Planting seeds
Planting cucumber seeds in a barrel in a circle with an interval of 10-15 cm. To provide protection from plant damage, the edges of the barrel must be equipped with a foam tube. Since the weather conditions will still change, you need to protect the plants from the influence of the weather on their growth. To do this, you need to make a small shelter with the help of iron arcs, which are cross-inserted into the ground above the barrel and a film that will cover this structure.
Then the film must be fixed by tying it to the walls of the barrels. Since the organic matter in the barrel will rot, the earth will settle over time and after a week there will be about 20 cm from the edge of the barrel to the soil surface. This allows the cucumbers to grow freely as they gradually have more room to develop under cover.
The temperature under the film will always remain warm due to the fact that during the decay of organic matter, heat is always released. Therefore, the method of growing cucumbers in barrels is good because even if the air temperature outside drops, the barrel will remain warm and fluctuations will not affect the growth of plants in any way.
Remove the film only when there is no longer a risk of freezing. This time comes around the end of June.
Care
Soon after the film has been removed, the cucumbers will begin to grow rapidly and, as a result, roll over the edge of the barrel. To avoid damage to plants during strong winds, it is best to secure the branches of the plant so that they do not fray.
Caring for cucumbers in a barrel does not take much effort. All that is needed is watering and weeding. Cucumbers need to be watered only once every 4 days, but this is only if there was no rain. For each barrel you need to spend half a bucket of water. And there are even fewer problems with weeding, because you won’t do it for a long time, since the area of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbone barrel is about one square meter.
To keep the surface moist longer, it is necessary to mulch it with a small amount of humus or compost. The height of this layer should be approximately 3-5 cm. As a result of such care, the cucumbers in the barrel will grow earlier than those in the garden. And the harvest will be many times greater.
Barrel grades
So far, there are no certain varieties that are grown specifically in barrels, so you can take the same varieties that are intended for growing in the garden. When choosing, you only need to consider that they must be early maturing or hybrids. Since today there are a fairly large number of varieties, such a procedure as his choice will not take much time.
Also, for those who first decided to do vegetable growing or gardening, and for those who want to improve their skills in this area, a good training video program called “Oktyabrina Ganichkina. Practical advice”. Here you can find answers to questions that affect the cultivation of cucumbers in a barrel.
Video “Growing cucumber in a barrel”
How to grow cucumbers on a minimum piece of land. In this example, 8 bushes grow in a barrel. How to prepare the barrel itself for operation, how to grow cucumbers themselves in such conditions.
