Many gardeners today prefer to grow juicy and tasty tomatoes, which contain a large amount of vitamins, in their own greenhouse. This business has its own nuances and secrets, and one of the important points that both experienced and novice gardeners need to know is the scheme for planting tomatoes in a greenhouse. How to properly prepare the seedling planting site, what is the density of the bushes in the ground, at what distance from each other should they be placed?
Place of planting
Tape two-line scheme for planting tomatoes
The initial stage of planting seedlings of your future tomatoes is the preparation of the greenhouse itself, the place for planting vegetables and seedlings. Many novice greenhouse growers are not serious about the crucial stage of preparation, although it depends on it how quickly fragile seedlings can adapt to the conditions of protected ground artificially created for them, and what the expected tomato crop will be in the future.
Therefore, already 10 days after the start of planting seedlings in a greenhouse, disinfection of the soil should be carried out, since most of the pathogens prefer to be in it. First you need to remove the top layer of earth 10 cm, and process the rest with a well-established solution of the well-known copper sulfate – for its manufacture, a tablespoon is taken per 10 liters of water.
Experts do not advise planting tomatoes for several years in a row in one place.
After you have disinfected the soil, you should loosen it, remove unnecessary weeds, and then fertilize. Most often, for these purposes, it is customary to use about 8 kg of humus, adding a glass of charcoal to it. Such a mixture is necessary to feed the future seedling planting site. Instead of such a mixture, you can also use a bucket of coarse sand or expanded clay per square meter of soil. Loamy or sandy soil is best suited for tomatoes. Tomato seedlings must be planted in warm soil – the temperature at this moment at a depth of 15 cm should not be below 14 degrees. To achieve this effect, the soil is first covered with a black film.
It is also permissible to pour warm water directly into the holes before planting. Thanks to heated beds, planting tomatoes becomes possible several weeks earlier than generally accepted norms, and inside the greenhouse the microclimate necessary for the harmonious growth and development of vegetable crops is achieved. Immediately before planting tomatoes, it is imperative to pour the soil with a solution of the well-known potassium permanganate, which has a temperature of about 50 – 60 degrees. Such a solution is prepared at the rate of 1 g of potassium permanganate per 10 liters of water. As for the greenhouse itself, it will need to be covered with another layer of a dense film in order to make additional insulation and provide reliable protection to the inner layer of the material, extending the term of its operation.
Scheme, density, distance
As for the optimal size of the holes planned for planting, a lot depends on the variety of tomato seedlings that you choose for your greenhouse. According to generally accepted standards, for undersized types of tomatoes, it is necessary to plan holes of about 20 cm, and for tall ones – 30 cm each. Do not be surprised that the holes begin to be prepared a week before planting seedlings, because, as mentioned above, they should be placed in warm ground so that your seedlings do not start to get sick and eventually die.
Before planting, seedlings are hardened (two weeks before planting in a greenhouse) and treated to protect against pests. This should be done five days before planting in the ground with a solution of boric acid. A couple of days before planting, you should also cut off the lower leaves of vegetable crops. It is unacceptable to plant seedlings too deep so that they do not go to the root. Seedlings should be placed vertically and covered with the prepared soil mixture at a level that matches the level of the recess in the seedling box, but if they are not too stretched out yet. If you have already managed to stretch out, then the stem is not buried in the soil. Also, you can’t add too much fertilizer to the soil, because if you overdo it and put them in each hole, you can end up with not bushes with tomatoes, but a large green tree.
The scheme of planting tomatoes in heated greenhouses
Planting tomatoes is recommended in the evening on a cloudy day and in the soil previously moistened to the desired state. First, holes are made about 12 cm deep, in each of them another hole is also formed. After that, we install a pot with a seedling and sprinkle it with earth. The second hole will need to be backfilled 10 to 12 days after the culture has established itself. This applies to overgrown seedlings, seedlings of normal length are moved into the ground without pots. Before that, each of them is carefully examined for damage, then warm water is poured into the hole and a plant is planted.
The density of planting future tomatoes in the ground should be as follows – low-growing varieties, which are usually formed into several stems, are planted in the well-known chess planting pattern in two rows. The distance between the rows should, according to the rules, be 50 – 60 cm, and between the crops themselves – about 40 cm. Standard and determinant varieties of tomatoes that will be formed into one stem can be planted somewhat thicker – make a distance of about 50 cm between rows, and 35 – 40 cm between plants.
As for indeterminate species, they are planted not so densely, the distance between the rows should be about 40 cm, between the bushes – about 70 cm, and the path that separates the rows should be 100 cm long. Such a planting pattern is called tape-nesting or multi-line , since 2 – 3 rows of plantings form, as it were, a line or ribbon. Often, a square-nest or square method of planting is also used – at the intersection of a trail of markers made in advance, they plant from one (square method) to two to four (square-nest or parallel method) tomatoes. To summarize all of the above, then the planting density should ideally be such that each of them does not experience discomfort, receives enough sunlight, nutrients from the soil and can develop normally in the area allotted to it.
Video “Recommendations for planting tomatoes”
On the recording, the vegetable grower talks about growing tomatoes, the necessary conditions for growing and the planting method.