To grow truly tasty and healthy vegetables on your site, you will have to make a lot of work. But it’s worth it: good nutrition will ensure unbreakable health for the whole family.
In the summer heat, it is very nice to eat a salad of freshly picked cucumbers from the garden. It is hardly possible to find a garden where they would not be grown. With good care, you can get cucumbers with a rather pleasant taste, but they can also grow so that they cannot be taken into the mouth due to strong bitterness.
Why cucumbers grow bitter
Cucumber gives bitterness to cucurbitacin, a special substance whose appearance indicates that the conditions for the development and growth of plants are extremely unfavorable, and the cucumbers themselves lack minerals, light, and moisture.
Mostly cucurbititacin accumulates in those places where the stem is attached, and in the peel around this place. You can soften the bitter taste a little if you cut the ponytails and peel the cucumbers. This method can be used if cucumbers are to be eaten raw. If you make billets from such cucumbers, then cucurbitacin leaves during processing itself.
Reducing the bitterness of cucumbers in this way is perfect as an emergency measure. But it is much better to try to provide cucumbers with such ripening conditions under which they will have a good taste.
How to grow cucumbers without bitterness
Cucurbitacin has an antitumor effect, so it should not be completely excluded from food either. It is found in all cucumbers, but they begin to bitter only when its concentration in the fetus is too high. Its content can change with prolonged cooling, a sharp change in air temperature, uneven irrigation, as well as when cold water is used for irrigation. That is, the appearance of bitterness always occurs after any stress for the plants.
We must try to minimize such surprises. Watering cucumbers to produce in warm, dry weather, the water should be warm. In the heat it is better to water in small doses, about once every three days. Moisturize the soil to produce 10 cm. In time, the loosening of cucumbers should be carried out. Gathering the fruits, you cannot turn the lashes.
Cucumbers do not like fresh manure - when feeding, it is better to use calcium, potassium nitrate. Able to reduce the content of cucurbitacin in cucumbers nitrogen. You can still strengthen your own immune system of cucumbers, for which sprayers "novosil", "epin-extra", etc. are used.
The least bitterness is in cucumbers that are grown in open ground on nitrogen-rich soils. A slight shading and humidity of about 60% will benefit and slow down the formation of cucurbitacin. In young plants, the concentration of the substance is much lower than in older ones.
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