To be able to enjoy fresh tomatoes regardless of the season, you need to start growing ripe and juicy fruits in your own greenhouse. To get a good harvest, you need to follow all the rules for planting a tomato, as well as competently care for these very demanding plants. Our recommendations will help both experienced and novice summer residents to plant tomatoes and get a rich harvest.
Landing
A modern greenhouse can be built from ordinary polyethylene film, glass or the latest durable material – polycarbonate. In any case, it must have normal dimensions for good growth and harmonious development of tomatoes. Growing a vegetable like a tomato requires a competent approach, so it is important to foresee all the nuances. After you build your greenhouse from polycarbonate or other material with everything you need – comfortable lighting, a good ventilation system, that is, carry out all the preliminary preparations for planting a tomato, you can proceed to the next step. It is necessary to prepare the soil inside the greenhouse for the subsequent planting of tomatoes.
Experts do not recommend growing tomatoes in the same greenhouse for several years in a row. In this case, cultures can often get sick.
Once upon a time, it was customary to plant tomatoes after cucumbers. But in recent years, these cultures have begun to hurt together with this method of planting – they are affected by an unpleasant ailment called anthracnose. That is why preparing for planting a tomato involves replacing the soil and processing it using a hot solution of copper sulfate – its temperature should be about 100 degrees. To prepare the solution yourself, you should take a tablespoon of this fertilizer.
Many novice summer residents often ask one question – is it possible to plant other vegetables along with tomatoes in the same greenhouse made of polycarbonate or glass? Experts say that other plants from the nightshade group, for example, pepper, get along well with them. Therefore, planting tomatoes at the same time as peppers is quite acceptable. Since both of these crops – both peppers and tomatoes – require similar care conditions. Of course, planting peppers in the same room as tomatoes is best only when you cannot do without it. In this case, pepper planting can be carried out both on a separate bed and between tomatoes.
The soil for pepper, as well as for tomatoes, should be loose and moist. There is even a special variety of pepper that has an interesting shape and color of the fruit, which is called “tomato-like”. It is also quite acceptable to plant tomatoes with eggplants. How to do this in accordance with all the rules, the video at the end of the recording will tell.
When a week remains before planting tomatoes in the greenhouse, you need to carry out the stage of preparing the beds. Their width should be about 60 – 90 cm, and the height should be about 25 – 30 cm. Between the beds, you should definitely leave passages about 70 cm wide. For planting a tomato, it is customary to use clay or loamy soil after sawdust is mixed with it , humus and peat in equal proportions. For one square meter of land, you will need about three buckets of such a mixture.
In the case when peat is used instead of soil, humus, turf, sawdust and sand must be mixed with it in a ratio of 1: 1: 1: 0. After preparing the soil, it should be fertilized with double granular superphosphate – you need to take a teaspoon of the product, as well as wood ash – it will take a couple of tablespoons. Preparation of planting material for planting in a greenhouse made of polycarbonate, glass or film invariably begins with growing seedlings. It is best to sow seeds in special containers from February to the end of March. After about 5 days, when the shoot length is about 50 cm, the tomato seedlings can be removed from the containers.
The scheme of planting plants largely depends on the variety of the plant and the characteristics of its bushes. For example, in undersized varieties with an early ripening period in a greenhouse, three shoots are formed, so they are advised to plant them in two rows in a checkerboard pattern, as shown in the video. In this case, two bushes should be at a distance of about 35 cm from each other. As for standard varieties, in which one shoot is well developed, it is permissible to plant them more densely. But at the same time, the distance between crops should not be less than 30 cm. Since tall tomato varieties need more space, they will be planted correctly at a distance of about 70 cm from each other.
Before planting plants in the ground, you should make sure that it has warmed up to a temperature of 15 degrees. It should also be remembered that the stems of seedlings should not be too immersed in the soil, since in this case the tomato can go into the roots, and not into growth. The soil should not contain an excess amount of nitrogen, as in this situation the foliage will grow excessively, and not the fruits. After you have examined the seedling for damage, you can plant the future tomato in the ground. How to do it correctly, will demonstrate our video.
Hybrid varieties are best suited for greenhouse cultivation. They should be planted in warm ground in the first half of May, when the height of seedling stems already reaches 30-35 cm. It is believed that after this age, seedlings take root well in a new place and adapt to the proposed conditions. As mentioned above, tall varieties are planted in a checkerboard pattern, but medium and dwarf ones require a different planting method – in rows, while the distance between plants should be about 40 cm. Non-overgrown seedlings are planted vertically, if the plants are stretched out, they must be laid obliquely in the prepared holes, cutting off the lower sheets and sprinkling them with earth. Pay special attention to those seedlings that have outgrown. For her, a 12-centimeter hole should be made in the ground, in which another more in-depth one is made, coinciding in height with the height of the pot in which the seedling is located. After a few weeks, the originally formed hole must be sprinkled with earth.
Care
After about two weeks have passed since the planting of vegetable crops, they will need to be fertilized for the first time. Such top dressing should consist of mullein and nitrophoska – at the rate of a tablespoon of nitrophoska, half a liter of liquid mullein per 10 liters of water. With this solution, each bush should be watered, using a liter for each of them. After 10 days, it is necessary to feed the crops again, using potassium sulfate and a fertilizer called Fertility. To prepare such a fertilizer, add a tablespoon of the product and a teaspoon of potassium sulfate to 10 liters of water. This top dressing is recommended to be used about three times a season. You can see the measures for caring for tomatoes in the greenhouse on our video.
Along with plant nutrition, caring for them also implies that crops should be watered in a timely manner and in the right amount. Remember that you can not water the tomatoes too abundantly, as this can adversely affect the quality and taste of the fruit. Experts advise watering tomatoes every five days. Consider the fact that in the first ten days after planting, watering is also not desirable, since the crops have not yet had time to adapt to the new living conditions. When you take care of plants in a greenhouse, remember that the water temperature for irrigation should be about 20 – 22 degrees.
The approximate amount of water that plants need before the onset of the flowering period is 4 – 5 liters per square meter. During the flowering period, this amount increases to 10 – 13 liters. It is best to water the crops in the greenhouse in the morning. Proper care of vegetable crops also involves maintaining the optimal temperature regime inside the greenhouse. When the weather is sunny outside, it should be about 20 – 22 degrees in the greenhouse, when cloudy – 19 – 20. It is especially important to prevent sudden temperature fluctuations at night. The temperature during this period should be about 16 – 17 degrees before flowering.
After the crops bloom, the temperature should be 26 – 32 degrees. The lower limit of temperature during the flowering period is at least 14 – 16 degrees. After you have collected the first fruits, you can maintain the temperature in the greenhouse at 16-17 degrees. This can have a beneficial effect on the growth and ripening of tomatoes. Another important point of care is considered to be the pruning of stepchildren – unnecessary lateral processes developing on the leaves. They should be removed regularly, and the bush itself should be formed from the main shoot, on which about five brushes are left.
About a month before the end of the growing season, you need to pinch the top. When the fruits ripen and begin to turn red, the lower leaves are removed. Pruning is best done in the morning. In the process of caring for tomatoes, do not forget about the prevention of various diseases. Black leg disease is very dangerous for seedlings. To avoid the appearance of this fungus, the earth is changed to a new one before planting crops in the greenhouse.
In order to prevent the development of leaf blight, the bushes are treated three times – a week after planting the seedlings, 20 days after the first treatment, and then after about a third of the brushes bloom. It is customary to process bushes with the means “Barrier” and “Barrier”. The third treatment is recommended to be carried out using a garlic solution.
Video “Growing tomatoes in greenhouse conditions”
Video on how to create optimal conditions for growing tomatoes, how to deal with diseases and how to form a bush.
