Tomatoes are one of the most beloved, popular vegetables on our table, which we surround with care and attention at all stages of growth - before planting in a garden, greenhouse or greenhouse. Do I need to dive tomatoes? The opinion of most gardeners is inclined to a positive answer. How and when to dive tomatoes? What is a pick of tomatoes? What is it for?
To bring fruiting time closer, to make seedling bushes stronger, gardeners use an effective agrotechnical technique - picking.
What is a pick of tomatoes
After the tomatoes give the first two or three full leaves, it's time to dive them or transplant the bushes into a larger container. The picking method (replanting) allows the seedlings to form a stronger root system. Prevents stretching, allows you to get the crop early. When diving, the root of the plant deepens, this makes it possible to form new lateral roots.
With a competent picking, weak specimens are rejected, and promising seedlings are planted in separate pots for subsequent development.
Typically, sowing of tomato seeds is done by the end of the calendar winter (February or early March). If you did everything correctly in advance: sowed the seeds, took into account the requirements for lighting, watering, changing temperatures day or night, then it's time to dive.
How to dive tomato seedlings?
After a certain time after the emergence of seedlings, it becomes clear which shoots are weaker. They should be removed so that they do not draw vitality from strong brethren. After about a month, the plants will gain strength, they will have the first real leaves - this will serve as a signal - you can begin to dive.
For several hours, tomato seedlings need to be properly watered, the water temperature should not be lower than + 20 ° C. New containers for seedlings (cups, pots, special forms) should not be very large, approximately 8 × 8 or 10 × 10 cm in diameter.
If these are not special containers, then you must first prepare them, for example, pierce the bottom of the pot several times so that the water does not stagnate.
Then you need to fill with pre-prepared soil, crush a little earth, make holes. If you have potassium permanganate at home, then you can make a slightly pink solution and water it with soil before planting. For lack of potassium permanganate, you just need to moisten the hole with water at room temperature - this will positively affect the further survival of tomatoes.
How to dive tomatoes, if they were originally sown, grew all together? To gently, comfortably remove a tomato bush from the ground, you can take a sharpened wooden stick or a small fork, and then carefully remove the sprout with an earthen lump.
If it does not work out with a lump, then at least do not shake the ground from the roots.
Be careful not to damage the roots. Try to keep your hands less in contact with the green part of the seedling. Tender tomato sprouts are very sensitive. Contact of human hands (skin temperature) with the stem or leaflets can cause stress. The plant may become ill. Try to hold the plant by the part of the stem that is closer to the root. Or, even better, behind a clump of earth with a root.
I know that some gardeners remove cotyledon leaves before a pick.
I tried in different ways. Predominantly removed cotyledonous leaves if seedlings extended
and the plant had to be buried during a dive in order to slightly inhibit growth.
How to dive tomato seedlings, if it was previously grown in individual molds or cups? Here the difference is only in the process of extracting an earthen coma along with the sprout. From separate molds the lump is much easier to extract, for example, by transshipment. To do this, the day and a half before picking, they stop watering the seedlings, the earth dries out a little, and when the mold is turned upside down, the seedling with soil freely falls out. It can be helped by light pressure on the bottom of the container, the stem with leaves is passed between the fingers. This method is also good because the roots of the plant are not injured during the process.
Tomatoes how to dive if the root system has formed in different ways? Correctly formed roots should be approximately the same in size, in their structure resemble a fluffy ball. Such roots do not need to be pinched or thrown too much into the soil - deepening to the level of cotyledonous leaves will be enough. After that, gently press the ground around the sprout. Too deep penetration negatively affects the further growth of the bush, as it will spend all its efforts on the formation of new roots.
If one of the roots is more actively developed than the others, it should be slightly shortened - clipped by about 1-1.5 cm. If you damaged this main stem root when removing the seedling, then do not worry much. The favorable development of the urinary system is the main condition for tomatoes, when a bush is transplanted to a permanent place of residence, the roots of the plant will deepen exactly as they need (down or to the sides).
Care for tomato seedlings after a dive
After peeling, seedlings of tomatoes need to be placed where they will be hidden from direct sunlight. Daytime temperatures should be + 20..23 ° C, nighttime - + 15..17 ° C. After 4-5 days, the seedlings can be irrigated from the spray gun or poured with water at room temperature. It is impossible to moisturize before, since the roots, looking for moisture, begin to stretch, and accordingly, grow stronger. As soon as you see that the sprouts are freshened up, take root in a new place, they can be brought into the light.
After 10-12 days, make a control inspection: if the tomato seedlings have acquired a juicy green color, put in new leaves - the process went well.
Feeding is done twice:
- 2 weeks after the dive,
- 3 weeks after the first fertilizer application.
Top dressing for tomato seedlings is important - they have a beneficial effect on root development, growth, and fruit formation. Complex mineral supplements that contain potassium sulfate, superphosphate, ammonium nitrate, and urea are well suited for these purposes. After top dressing, seedlings must be watered with clean water (as if to wash away fertilizers), carefully loosen the ground.
Additional picking questions
Is it possible not to dive tomato seedlings?
The answer to this question will be yes - yes, it can. But at the same time, sowing of seeds is carried out about a month later (late March-early April). They are sown either directly in the ground (under established warm weather) or in a greenhouse. Pre-seeds are soaked for several hours, sown with a rare step - this is a reckless way to grow tomatoes.
Fertilizing with urea or nitrophos will favorably affect the general condition, the development of bushes. When two full-fledged leaves (not cotyledons) appear, the tomatoes are thinned out - they just pinch off the weak shoots with a fingernail. After 3 days, the seedlings are fed with a solution of nitrate (15 mg / 10 l of water), about 1 liter of fertilizer is poured under each bush. The second, potassium-phosphorus dressing is done before the fruits begin to increase in size.
Also, seeds can be sown immediately in separate pots, and after transplantation, transplanted into the soil in the garden, bypassing the picking process.
What to do if tomato seedlings stretched before a dive?
Seedlings are drawn due to lack of light. This is a natural process, as all plants are drawn to the sun. A similar phenomenon can also be observed when the bushes are planted too close (a common tray, not individual molds), they do not have enough light because they obscure it to each other.
Another reason is non-compliance with the temperature regime. For germinating seeds you need heat. But when the seedlings have already seen the light, the temperature must be lowered so that they do not actively grow until the moment of the dive.
To remedy the situation, tomatoes should be transplanted into boxes, having previously drawn up the elongated grooves in the ground. The fertile soil should be mixed with humus, sand, before planting tomatoes, the furrow itself needs to be poured with warm water. The seedling is laid along the groove, tilting an earthen lump with roots at an angle of 45 degrees. In this case, the roots lie, and the top is visible on the surface. The root system is neatly covered with earth, then also the rest of the plant.
Thus, new roots will grow on a stem buried in the soil, it will straighten, will bear fruit normally, except perhaps a little later. The same method is used when the bushes are planted in open ground at a constant place of growth. To give a horizontal direction to the bushes, they also use tying. On the edges of the grooves, support pins are installed, between which the ropes are stretched. The stem is neatly tied to them.
There is another method of “resuscitation” of elongated seedlings: before diving, the elongated apex is plucked off the sprout so that a piece of the stem remains about 1 cm above the cotyledonous leaves. After that, the seedling is dived into a separate container and buried as usual (until cotyledon leaves). A transparent plastic cup is put on top of the pot or a plastic film is pulled. After 7-10 days, a new full leaf appears on the remaining stem.
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We hope that after reading this information, you figured out why to dive tomatoes.
Perhaps you will choose a seedling-free way of planting tomatoes, that is, you can do without a dive stage. And immediately plant the bushes extracted from the cups directly into the ground.
It all depends on your preferences, the time that you either have or not.
Sometimes, in order to strengthen the seedlings, to avoid stretching the sprouts, gardeners use a double or even triple pick, each time planting bushes in a large container.
In any case, now you know when to dive tomatoes, we hope that the results of this method will be useful and will please you with a generous harvest.