Contents
Pumpkins are very useful for humans with their content of vitamins and microelements, and this statement is true for fruits of any variety. Juice, pulp, seeds – absolutely everything is useful, it doesn’t matter if the fruit is small or large, the main thing is that it is ripe. In order for the fruit to be perfectly stored and to be enjoyed until the next harvest, it is necessary that it ripen in the garden. The formation of a bush can contribute to this.
What is pinching for?
An amazing vegetable is a pumpkin, its fruit can be large and small, it can be one per plant, or you can grow a whole bunch of them. All this the gardener can do at will, forming a plant and making pinching.
Pumpkins are not difficult to grow. If the plant has enough nutritional value of the soil (which was taken care of in advance, since autumn), then you can not even feed it, just water it and watch how the lashes and large green leaves grow. The richer the soil, the more lashes develop in one plant, flowers appear on each, many fruits can be tied. Leaves and branches require a lot of nutrition, the roots work for them, even if the shoots are barren, thereby depriving the fruits. If everything is left as it grows, the fruits may not ripen, there may be too many of them, and the root (even as powerful as that of a pumpkin) will not be able to feed them. That is why the proper cultivation of pumpkins involves pinching and pinching.
The owner, lowering the seed into the ground, should already know what he wants to receive. Based on this, he is engaged in the formation of a bush. Whether he is growing a giant pumpkin or wants to get a few small, so-called portioned ones, he achieves this by doing the right pinching. There are usually more female flowers on the side lashes than on the main one. If they want to get more fruits, they pinch the main lash, do not let it grow, but instead stimulate the growth of the lateral ones. In any case, the formation of a plant affects the number of fruits, and hence their quality and ripening rate.
How is it performed
Pumpkin is grown as bushy and long-leafed. The correct formation of a plant includes the concepts of pinching and pinching. Pinching is the removal of excess axillary shoots. It is better to remove them when young, no longer than 7 cm. In a bush pumpkin, the first fruit is formed on the main shoot, it can be pinched so that it does not grow further, but focuses on growing this fruit. All the time, while the bush is growing, it needs to be thinned out, removing excess shoots, the bush should not be very thick. On the bush, summer residents usually control the number of fruits.
The peculiarity of long-climbing varieties lies in their rapid growth. The more nutritious the soil, the more lashes grow. If the owner wants a lot of fruits, but their size does not interest him, then he lays out the lashes so that they do not interfere with each other, do not cover the sun, and removes excess leaves. The whips are sprinkled with moist soil, then they give additional roots, which makes them more stable and provides additional nutrition. This is the only way to form a plant.
If the summer resident is not sure that his pumpkins will ripen before the cold weather, if he wants to influence the number of fruits, in both cases he is forced to pinch. Its purpose is to stop the growth of the whip. On the main lash, 3-4 fruits are allowed to start, after the last, 5 leaves are counted and a growth bud is pinched off. Do the same with side shoots. The number of lateral lashes is limited earlier, if there is such a desire: when a couple of the strongest after the main one can be distinguished from several shoots, they are left, and the rest are removed. This allows the plant (or forces it) to direct all its forces to the ripening of the fruit. Further care, also directed towards one goal, helps to achieve the desired result.
Pinching will also help if the summer resident wants to grow many fruits on one plant. In this case, the growth of the main lash is stopped even earlier – after 1-2 ovaries, this stimulates the formation of lateral ones, on which there are usually more female flowers, which means that with a certain care, more fruits will be obtained.
Video “Growing and pinching”
Does a pumpkin need it
Pumpkin came to us from tropical latitudes, she loves warmth, sunlight and moisture. At the same time, it can suffer from abundant watering or from the close occurrence of groundwater, which its long root can reach. She loves light, loose soils, but grows well in black soil. Such a controversial pumpkin is wonderfully grown by summer residents everywhere: from the most southern to the most northern regions.
It is safe to say that without any pinching, a plant that has already germinated will bear fruit (if the flowers pollinate normally). Perhaps there will be many of them, and not all of them will ripen. But the most delicious pumpkin is ripe, and only the fruit that has ripened in the garden can be stored until the next harvest. Forage gourds are hardly cultivated as carefully as those grown for their table. Of course, a vegetable that is properly cultivated throughout the entire cultivation will differ from what has grown without top dressing on a long lash without pinching, but each gardener decides how necessary and important it is.
Growing technologies
The more fertilizer is applied to the soil, the more intensively new pumpkin shoots grow. In this case, pinch it, thin out, remove excess leaves. Top dressing is stopped when the fruits have reached their maximum (or simply the desired size), some gardeners, knowing the composition of the soil of their site, in August are limited only to potash fertilizers, and then even stop watering.
Pinching is not a single procedure, it is carried out as needed all summer. The first pinching and pinching is carried out even before flowering, and then they look at the flowers, observe the possibilities of pollination. If male flowers bloom after female ones, if there are no insects during flowering, artificial pollination has to be done.
There are different technologies for growing pumpkins, all of them are correct. There are stories of summer residents who fertilized the plot in the fall, and then sowed pumpkin seeds in the spring. The next time they came to her at the end of September for the harvest. If the soil is nutritious enough, and the summer resident has no special claims, then mid-ripening fruits may well ripen without much trouble in the middle lane.
Video “The result of pinching”
What happens if you pinch a pumpkin at the time of its cultivation? What will be the final effect, and is it worth it? You will learn all this from the short video below.
