Technology of growing high-quality transplants for greenhouses with your own hands

If you skillfully set up a greenhouse, it will provide such favorable conditions that it will undoubtedly rectify all seedling mistakes later on, breathing life into and reviving even poorly grown transplants; however, it is still better to plant high-quality seedlings in a good greenhouse. What should they be like?

The cultivation technology for most crops in a greenhouse begins with seedlings. I believe that your own seedlings are more reliable and superior in all qualities to purchased ones. With your own seedlings, you know the exact cultivar or hybrid, whereas with seedlings brought from who-knows-where, a mix-up in cultivars is possible.

And in general, it is better if these are not "leftover seedlings for the public" from industrial farms in the south. In that case, you will get an industrial hybrid not adapted to your cold region.

Risks of Purchasing Ready-made Seedlings

Many people, and most likely even the majority, buy seedlings at their local vegetable market, where all sorts of sellers with nursery plants set up shop in the spring. Just think for yourself, looking at the crates of seedlings of allegedly popular cultivars:

• who would be so thoughtful as to look into cultivars for the private sector;
• who would search for their rare and expensive seed to sell;
• isn't it easier to take ready-made greenhouse seedlings for resale;
• who can guarantee that the cultivars you are buying are exactly the ones written on the side of the cardboard with a marker?

At best, even if you get seedlings from an agricultural firm that uses cultivars regionalized for the given area, these will be plants overfed with mineral fertilizers and accustomed to peat. Such plants are harder to protect from diseases.

It is understandable with beginners, as they simply do not yet know how to produce their own seedlings, but I find it strange that some experienced gardeners also prefer to buy a pig in a poke, "just to avoid messing with pots." After all, solanaceous seedlings are the easiest thing you can possibly grow on a windowsill!

Technology for Growing Cucurbit Seedlings

In general, it can be said that, strange as it may seem at first, it is more difficult to prepare seedlings of cucurbit crops (melons, cucumbers, watermelons) than solanaceous ones (tomato, sweet and hot pepper, eggplant). And all because of their different reactions to overstaying in pots.

Cucurbits do not tolerate overstaying; they usually cannot withstand prolonged existence in pots. The lifespans of seedlings in containers are shown in the table:

Something in their root system breaks forever when they rot in cramped conditions, so the plants remain small "cripples" for the entire season or, in the end, cannot even grow and die. For this reason, seed for all cucurbit crops is sown strictly one month before planting in their permanent location.

Important. All cucurbits are vulnerable to fluctuations in the concentration of the soil solution in seedling containers: if something goes wrong, the soil mixture is overfed, and the seedlings wither at the root collar and die.

According to my long-term observations, of all cucurbits, it is most difficult to deal with melon seedlings. For them, you need to create the most stable conditions, avoiding the use of heavily clayey, heavily sandy, or highly peaty soil for the seedlings, as well as avoiding over-drying, overfeeding with top dressing, or simple overwatering.

The melon is a very delicate crop at the cotyledon seedling stage. As they say, just sow them in loose soil from your own garden, water them lightly, and place them under a film cover in diffused light, letting the seedlings develop slowly. And you can keep them like that until they are moved to the greenhouse. And there, in "real" soil, the melon seedlings will feel right at home.

Conclusion

Melon and watermelon seedlings can be successfully transplanted into a greenhouse at the age of the first true leaf or even just the cotyledons — this is still more reliable than planting overstayed seedlings. And the surest way for a beginner is to sow their seed directly into the greenhouse in their permanent location.

Solanaceous crops

They stoically tolerate any overstaying, even in small containers. And although literature everywhere indicates that tomato seedlings should not be older than 50–60 days (2 months) before planting, one must realize that this is not only not strict but also largely conditional. This is just a "detail of industrial tomato production" (and, moreover, a southern one) that has been blindly copied for amateur gardening and accepted as a dogma.

No one disputes that 50-day-old plants establish themselves perfectly well; it is just that for the Middle Zone, more mature transplants have their advantages, and you can be certain that they will take root just as reliably. Based on my many years of observation and repeated comparisons, 3-month-old tomato transplants prove to be more reliable in the Middle Zone. I can apply the same statement to eggplant and sweet pepper, although the difference is not as noticeable for them. All you need to do is use larger pots, starting from five liters.