The seedling buds and the health of future plants directly depends on the germination of seeds and the energy of their germination. But gardeners with experience are accustomed in everything to rely only on themselves, so each of them seeks to prepare the seeds for planting in order to get earlier and friendly shoots. Moreover, each summer resident has his own time-tested methods.
Seed preparation
The difficult climatic conditions of Central Russia force gardeners to grow most crops from seedlings. To seedlings were healthy, high-quality and able to give a good harvest, for sowing, you should use seed material that has high sowing qualities. To do this, you need to prepare it.
Pre-sowing preparation is good in that it makes the seeds more resistant to environmental conditions, increases their sowing qualities, germination and increases the yield of crops. It includes sorting by specific gravity, determination of sowing qualities of seeds, dressing, hardening and treatment with useful trace elements. Then usually the seeds begin to germinate.
Seed quality determination
First of all, it is necessary to sort the seeds by their weight, and only then check their sowing qualities. For sorting use ordinary table salt. Saline solution for a certain type of vegetables should be of different concentrations. For example, cucumber seeds are dipped in a solution, taking 30 g of salt and 1 liter of water for it, and 50 g of salt will be needed for eggplant, pepper, cabbage, and tomato seeds.
The seeds are lowered into the resulting solution and mixed. Light, empty seeds will immediately surface, they need to be removed. Qualitative, having good germination capacity are those seeds that have sunk to the bottom of the tank. They must be removed and washed thoroughly in clean water.
Next, the seeds are tested for germination. To do this, they are placed in a shallow container on wet gauze in the exact amount, for example, 10.30 or 50 pieces - this is necessary in order to then clarify the number of emergence. Cover the top with a second layer of gauze, constantly keeping it moist. Cover everything with glass and put in a warm place with a temperature of 20-30 degrees. After a certain time, for each culture it is strictly individual, roots will appear. Judging by the number of sprouted material, the percentage of its germination is determined. For example, if the roots appeared in less than 80%, then you will have to increase the number of seeds sown.
Seed dressing
Seed dressing is necessary to prevent the appearance of various bacterial, fungal and viral diseases. For this, various chemical preparations are used that process planting material in order to protect seedlings from diseases and pests.
If you are opposed to the use of chemicals, then seed treatment can be replaced by heat treatment. So, tomato seeds need to withstand two days at a temperature of 50 degrees, and then increase it to 80 degrees for a day. Keep in mind that when heating the seeds, the temperature should be raised no more than 1 degree in 5 minutes. The planting material of cucumbers, zucchini and pumpkin is heated for 3 hours at 50 degrees, then the temperature is lowered to 40 and left for another 10 hours. Disinfection of seeds of cabbage, carrots, beets and onions is carried out for 20 minutes in water with a temperature of 50 degrees. Add hot water periodically, maintaining the required temperature. Every 5 minutes, the seeds should be mixed.
Micronutrient seed treatment
Presowing treatment of seeds with an aqueous solution containing trace elements gives very good results. It can be prepared, for example, from an ash extract. In addition, regular wood ash is an excellent substitute for potassium sulfate. It is universal, and it can be used as fertilizer for any crops, but eggplant, cucumbers, zucchini, potatoes, pumpkin, pepper, and tomatoes especially need it. To cook the hood, you need to insist 150 g of ash in 10 liters of water. Before sowing, the seeds are soaked in the resulting solution for 5-6 hours at a temperature of 18-20 ° C, and then dried.
Soaking and germinating seeds
To accelerate the emergence of seedlings and reduce the number of dead plants under adverse weather conditions, you can use soaking, germination and hardening of seeds.
Soaking is usually applied until they completely swell, thereby accelerating the emergence of seedlings by an average of 3 days. Moreover, they germinate much faster, and subsequently the best crop, seeds soaked in melt snow water. It can be replaced with water obtained from melting ice from the freezer.
To begin with, the seed is soaked for several hours at room temperature, and then placed in a glass jar with several holes in the lid, washing it daily with water. If the room is very hot, then you will have to rinse up to 5 times a day. It is enough to sprinkle the seeds of some crops with a thin layer in any shallow container and pour water, covering it with a damp cloth. In the process of soaking, only 1-2% should hatch, the rest should only swell. The swollen seeds are planted in slightly moist soil.
After soaking, the seeds of some vegetables also sprout, which, in turn, accelerates the emergence of seedlings by almost another week. To do this, they are scattered with a thin layer in a saucer on a damp cloth in a room with a temperature of 15-25 ° C. Germination time depends on the culture and the desired degree of germination. To maintain the optimum level of humidity, the saucer is covered with glass or placed in a bag. Stop the process when most seeds appear white sprouts. They need to be planted very carefully in warm, moist, pre-treated soil.
