Do you want to please yourself and your relatives with fresh delicious vegetables right from the garden? Take care of their growing in your own garden! But, as is known, in order to collect a good harvest in summer and autumn, it is necessary to work in the garden all year round. What must be done in the winter, spring, summer and autumn months?
Winter: preparation for the next season
At the very beginning of the year, it is worthwhile replenishing the stocks of agrochemicals and preparing the seeds for sowing. Seeds need to be sorted by storage and size, disinfected. If you do not know if they still have germination, it's worth checking out.
When choosing in the store mix for seedlings, keep in mind that the best and most expensive is a mixture of peat with perlite. If it is expensive, you can prepare black earth, in which 50% of the mixture is added. Also you need to buy containers for planting seedlings: these can be peat-refilling cups, tablets, cassettes. All this you will need in early March.
Spring: sowing in the soil and working with seedlings
Garden beds should be prepared already in the very beginning of spring. Very often in March, the temperature fluctuates over large limits during the night and daytime. In the daytime, under the rays of the spring sun, the snow melts quickly, and at night, when frost seizes, the melted places freeze. In order to remove the snow from the beds? you can scatter ash on it or cover it with a film.
Such frost-resistant crops as carrots, onions, parsley, dill - are sown at the first snowfall. Do not delay with sowing, especially if there was a thaw.
Sowing carrots, keep in mind that this culture can be varied in terms. In early March, sow early and late varieties. The first will go for beam production, and the second - for August and autumn consumption. Sowing in late April of late-ripening varieties is intended for long-term storage. If you do not have enough seeding skills, look for seeds on paper, where the necessary density is already set.
Table beets are sown for 10-12 days after carrots, onions and dill with parsley. If you decide to sow it at the same time as other cultures, then it will develop much better and faster under shelter, but it is not necessary.
Salad and spinach can also be sown, as soon as snow falls. Sown under cover, they will give earlier products, but there is one subtlety. Often weeds grow faster in sheltered under the shelter. So choose clean places from them or cover up the place of sowing with black agrofiber, making in it the slots for the seeds.
You can start cultivation of seedlings of tomatoes, aubergines and peppers already at the very beginning of spring. But it's worth considering the time of the last frosts (May 25). If the crop is done before March 20, the rootlets of the plants will begin to get out of the pots already on the May holidays. If you do not have a greenhouse, then sowing is carried out after March 20 to plant the plants in the open ground after May 25.
To obtain seedlings, fill the cassettes with the soil mix and sweat the seeds to a depth of 2 cm - one per cell. When sprouting occurs every 2-3 days, rotate them 90 ° so that the seedling does not bend toward the light. At the same time, the temperature should be lowered to + 16-18 ° C, so that the subcampus stalk does not stretch. About the appearance of the 1-2-nd "real" leaf, transplant the shoots into peat-humus pots with a volume of 0.5 liters, discarding weak and underdeveloped specimens.
If you have agrofiber or film shelter, from the middle of April you can sow melons and gourds - pumpkin, squash, squash. As soon as white roots appear from the bottom opening of the plastic pot, the seedlings can be planted under cover. Remember that melons do not tolerate root injuries, so the transplant should be done as much as possible preserving the coma, for which a couple of days before disembarkation stop watering.
In April, planting seedlings in the open ground begin with the late cabbage. Simultaneously with it, early and middle-ripening varieties are planted under cover, otherwise they will grow slowly, losing valuable qualities. Heat-loving plants are planted in the ground at the end of frost (May 25).
Summer: feeding, protection and re-sowing
The first in the garden ripens early cabbage, which can threaten slugs. Sprinkle the plantation against them and between the rows of sawdust and chalk. In medium and late-ripening cabbage, in the early summer, there is often a deficit of macro- and microelements, the leaves become violet, which indicates a lack of phosphorus. Here, additional fertilizing with complex fertilizers will be effective.
The main problem that occurs when growing tomatoes is late blight. First it manifests itself in the form of withering of the lower leaves, and then all the leaves on the bush are covered with brown and yellow spots. Possible curling of tomato leaves may be due to lack of copper, feed plants with trace elements.
By tying the stems of the tomato to the twine, you will avoid hanging out the tops, which will make it easier for you to fight weeds, pasynkovanie and harvest, and also improve the lighting of the plant. You can remove 2-3 bottoms on tomatoes to prevent stagnation of air in the lower tier. In the second half of the summer you can sow Peking cabbage, varieties for autumn culture. First, the plants require regular watering and look weak, but in August-September their growth will be much more powerful.
Do not forget to remove aphids on plants. It can be seen from the weak growth of cultures and blanching of the leaves. Look at the underside of the leaves, if you find colonies of aphids there, try to crush the insects with your fingers to begin with. On large plantations, use biologics and aphids.
Radish is sown in August. Shortening the light day again creates conditions for its growth, only now it is worth using the latter varieties. In the fall you'll get a radish that looks like carrots. Late varieties are larger, stronger and sweeter than the early ones.
You can sow and rukkola. During the heat and with strong temperature fluctuations, the arugula quickly gives the arrows, the leaves become more coarse and bitter in taste. In August, with cold nights, these problems begin to disappear. But even if you find the leaves with bitterness, briefly lower them into boiling water, and it will disappear.
Autumn: podzimnii sowing and cleaning of the site
The best time to plant winter garlic - on September 25, but not too late to do so in early October. Before the onset of frosts, he will have time to take root. Before planting, sort the teeth into fractions to obtain aligned shoots.
In late October or early November, spend a sub-winter planting of plants adapted to colds - carrots, parsley, dill, celery, onions. Such crops require a depth of 2-3 cm, and an increase of 1.5 times the seeding rate. It is best to sow, falling asleep striae depth of 4-5 cm is not a frozen ground, but humus with sand or peat. Choose seed time so that the seeds can swell, but do not germinate. It is better to sow plants in several stages, so you will understand what period is most successful for these crops in your place of residence.
In the greenhouse, covered with a film, the season is closed in October, when the temperature drops below + 3 ° С at night. On tomatoes, cut off all the fruits and set aside separately the green, brown, red and cracked ones. If the tomatoes are still green, but they already show signs of illness, then it is better to immediately dispose of such specimens - they will rot faster than ripen. It is better to place brown and red tomatoes in a dry cool place, and green ones in a warm place. So you get fresh tomatoes until late autumn. Clear the plants from the twine, it is better not to discard the vegetable residues, but to bury or burn them.
An empty greenhouse needs to be disinfected within 3-4 hours, fumigated with sulfur smoke bombs. It is also worth making humus and digging the earth in the greenhouse. Do not forget to wipe the disinfecting compound, for example soda with the addition of calcium or chlorinated water, the internal elements of the frame. Especially carefully it is necessary to remove from the remains of grass places near diseased plants. Do not forget to remove the film from the greenhouse in time. The delay may turn into a skeleton of the carcass, if snow falls unexpectedly.