Content
Any gardener considers it his sacred duty to grow tasty and crispy cucumbers to enjoy them throughout the summer and make large reserves for the winter. But it’s not easy for everyone to cope with this task, since cucumbers are a rather demanding crop in terms of heat, humidity, and intensive nutrition. I would like to dwell on the latter in more detail. Because on loose, well-filled soils with organic matter, the cucumber itself grows practically without fertilizing. But not everyone has such soils. You also need to be able to create them. And I want to grow cucumbers here and now. Therefore, feeding cucumbers is almost a mandatory item in caring for this crop. Moreover, they respond to them with great gratitude.
Top dressing: what are they?
Everyone knows the most traditional liquid fertilizing - when some dark liquid is diluted in a watering can with water and the resulting solution is poured over cucumbers right up to the root. You can do the same with powder and crystalline solid fertilizers, diluting them in water first. All these methods are called in one word - root feeding.
They can be mineral and organic. Fertilizers for mineral feeding are usually bought in stores. Organic fertilizers can also be bought ready-made, which is very convenient for city residents - summer residents, who sometimes have nowhere to get the ingredients for such fertilizing. But more often they are prepared on their own site from various ingredients: manure, bird droppings, grass, hay, ash, etc.
There is also a whole class of fertilizers, when any substances that are beneficial for cucumbers are dissolved or infused for some time in water, and then the resulting liquid is sprayed on the cucumber bushes from bottom to top. Our grandmothers used brooms for this purpose, while modern industry has created a whole army of all kinds of sprayers - from manual to automatic.
This type of operation is called foliar or leaf operation. feeding cucumbers. After all, plants receive nutrition through leaves, and not through roots, which means that all nutrients are absorbed several times faster. Accordingly, the effect of this procedure becomes visible quite quickly, which cannot but please the gardener’s eye. That's probably why foliar feeding of cucumbers have become so popular lately.
In addition, cucumbers, unlike tomatoes, love such procedures, since they quite favor the effect of high humidity. You just need to take into account that leaf feeding for cucumbers will be much more effective in cool, cloudy weather.
- Firstly, at low temperatures, the roots begin to absorb nutrients from the soil much worse, which means that foliar feeding will come in handy.
- Secondly, in cloudy weather there is less chance of getting burns on the leaves of cucumbers from simultaneous spraying and illumination by the sun. In any case, for this reason, it is better to perform foliar feeding early in the morning or in the evening, when the sun is still or no longer there.
This is done so that the cucumber leaves do not get burned.
Mineral fertilizers
The first thing that comes to mind when you need to think about fertilizers for cucumbers is the use of mineral fertilizers. Indeed, in recent decades, they have become a means of traditional feeding of most vegetable and horticultural crops, due to their ease of use and quick impact.
Azofoska
This is one of the most popular fertilizers for use, including when growing cucumbers. Nitroammofoska (azofoska) is a complex fertilizer that contains all three essential nutrients in equal proportions. It dissolves well in water. To prepare a fertilizer solution for root feeding, 1 tablespoon of azofoska is diluted in a 10-liter bucket of water.
To feed cucumbers, one liter of this solution is poured under the root of each bush. The soil under the cucumbers should be moist before this.
If you want to carry out foliar fertilizing with azophoska, then reduce the concentration by half and do it until fruit sets.When the first ovaries appear, it is better to switch to root feeding and use other fertilizers with a high potassium content.
Urea or carbamide
If you urgently need to saturate cucumber plants with nitrogen, then urea is usually used for this purpose. In case of acute lack of nitrogen dilute 40 g of the substance in 10 liters of water; if preventive feeding is required, then you can use from 15 to 25 grams per 10 liters of water. Why urea? Unlike ammonium nitrate, it will not harm cucumber plants when foliar feeding. But you shouldn’t be overzealous with it either - it’s always better to underfeed it a little with nitrogen.
Superphosphate
During the flowering of cucumbers and in subsequent periods, other nutrients, such as phosphorus, are more relevant for plants. The simplest feeding would be to use superphosphate at a concentration of 35 grams per 10 liters of water. It must be taken into account that superphosphate is very poorly soluble in water. Therefore, experienced gardeners usually use the following trick: pour boiling water over the required amount of the substance and leave for about a day. Then the sediment is carefully filtered and the fertilizer solution is brought to the original volume.
Other types of fertilizers
For feeding cucumbers, both traditional root and leaf, in recent years it has been convenient to use a variety of complex fertilizers, among which the following varieties are the most popular:
- Kristalon - this fertilizer comes in many different brands, differing in the ratio of nutrients in them. It is important that its composition does not contain chlorine, but contains magnesium, sulfur and a number of essential microelements in chelated form.This form greatly facilitates their absorption by plants. Nitrogen in the crystallon fertilizer is in the amidium form, which is ideal for foliar feeding. To feed cucumbers, you can choose a special or green crystal. The NPK composition in it is 18:18:18, so it is a universal fertilizer. Cucumber Crystallon, which was specially formulated for cucumbers, is also ideal. Its NPK is 14:11:31, so it can be used at any stage of development and on any type of soil.
- Master - if the fertilizer described above was the brainchild of the Netherlands, then the Master fertilizer is a product of the Italian company Valagro. Otherwise, in terms of the variety of compositions and effects on plants, they are very similar. It also dissolves very well in water, so it can be used both for root watering and for leaf feeding. In addition, the magnesium presence also allows the master to be used for feeding during flowering and fruiting of cucumbers, when this element is vital.
- Plantofol is a high-quality complex fertilizer also originally from Italy, specially designed for foliar feeding of plants.
Organic fertilizers
In recent years, many gardeners are increasingly turning their backs on chemical fertilizers, dreaming that their own cucumbers will be natural and environmentally friendly.
Herbal infusions
Of course, classic organic fertilizers are infusions based on manure or bird droppings. But in recent years, when feeding animals and poultry with various mixed feeds, one cannot guarantee the complete safety of even such infusions.Therefore, the use of so-called green fertilizers is becoming increasingly popular.
Typically, this fertilizer is prepared as follows - any container from 50 to 200 liters is filled 2/3 with weeds: nettle, dandelion, quinoa, burdock, duckweed, wheatgrass, etc. The container is filled to the top with water, covered with a lid and left to infuse for several weeks. .
The liquid must be stirred daily. After the specified period, the green fertilizer can be diluted in a ratio of 1:20 and the resulting solution can be used to feed cucumbers by spraying and watering at the root.
Foliar feeding with hay infusion is very useful for cucumbers. To prepare it, rotted hay is poured with water in a 1:1 ratio, left for several days and then filtered. The resulting solution serves not only to feed, but also to protect cucumber plants from powdery mildew. Hay can be obtained by mowing green manure sown before winter. All you have to do is leave it outside in the rain for a few weeks and by summer there will already be a sufficient amount of rotted hay.
Isabion
More recently, the Swiss company Syngenta launched a new biological fertilizer on the Russian market - Isabion. This drug consists of 62.5% amino acids and peptides. It is able to penetrate cucumber plants using normal diffusion and accelerates the overcoming of various starvation conditions. Transports various nutrients when used together with fertilizers. Is a biostimulator of plant growth.For foliar feeding of cucumbers, 20 grams of the substance must be dissolved in 10 liters of water.
Some folk remedies
Eggshell fertilizer is popular among many gardeners. If you have acidic soils, you can use it when transplanting cucumber seedlings into open ground. It is better to take shells from raw eggs that have not been subjected to heat treatment. To use it as a fertilizer, it is recommended to grind it thoroughly. Egg shells can be added directly to the soil to deoxidize the soil and feed it with calcium. But this method of application is not very effective, since the calcium from its composition is poorly absorbed by the roots of cucumbers.
An infusion for foliar feeding is also prepared from eggshells. To do this, the shells of 5 eggs are thoroughly crushed and filled with 1 liter of warm water, after which they are left for 5 days. The appearance of a specific smell indicates that the infusion for foliar feeding of cucumbers is ready.
Many people have probably heard about banana supplements. And this is not surprising, since bananas contain a significant amount of potassium, as well as magnesium, calcium and phosphorus. The listed elements are especially necessary for cucumbers both during the flowering period and especially during the ripening of fruits. In particular, potassium and magnesium increase the number of ovaries, and, therefore, have a beneficial effect on yield.
There are many ways prepare fertilizer from banana peels.But the best option is the following: the peels of 3-4 bananas without tails are placed in a 3-liter jar, filled with completely filtered water (without chlorine) and left for 4-5 days. Then the solution is filtered, diluted twice and the cucumbers are sprayed with it several times with an interval of 10 days.
Interestingly, even ordinary brilliant green can serve as a fertilizer for feeding cucumbers. True, to a greater extent this solution will serve to protect plants from powdery mildew and other fungal diseases. To prepare it, you need to dilute 40 drops of brilliant green in a 10-liter bucket of water. Watering the beds with cucumbers with a more concentrated solution of brilliant green (a bottle of 10 liters of water) will help get rid of slugs.
Conclusion
In order to grow a bountiful harvest of tasty and crispy cucumbers, you can choose any of the fertilizers described above. By trying and combining them in different sequences, you can derive your own ideal formula for feeding cucumbers, which you can then pass on to the next generations.
