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Tomato is the most popular vegetable after potato. It has excellent taste and is irreplaceable in winter preparations. Advanced housewives, in addition to tomato juice, canning, salads and sauces, dry it, dry it and freeze it. In addition, tomatoes are healthy, and the fruits of red varieties will even help in the fight against the plague of the twenty-first century - depression. Everyone who lives in a private house, even if the plot is small, tries to grow at least a few bushes. Growing seedlings independently is all the more important the less land we have for planting tomatoes - this way we know exactly which varieties will bear fruit, and it’s better to control the quality of the seedlings ourselves. Growing tomato seedlings without picking – today we will examine this topic in detail.
What is the best way to grow tomato seedlings - with or without picking?
Each gardener has his own secrets and preferences, and besides, our climatic conditions and soils are different.Some believe that growing tomato seedlings without picking is not worth it, while others, on the contrary, believe that picking is a waste of time.
It is useless to argue about which method is better. Let everyone grow seedlings the way they do best. Both methods are correct and give good results. It’s just that a tomato grown without picking, after planting, will have slightly different requirements for cultivation than a previously picked one. For most, these differences will not matter. But for people who visit the garden only occasionally or for those who have problems with watering, our information can not only be useful, but also help them get a good harvest.
Why do you need to pick tomatoes?
Picking is transplanting seedlings into separate containers or into one large one at a distance from each other to increase the area of growth and nutrition. Picking promotes the development of a fibrous root system due to the growth of adventitious and lateral roots.
Often tomatoes are diving not once, but two or three times. Their root system recovers very quickly, its damage practically does not inhibit growth. The couple of days it took the plant to recover pays off in the future due to the rapid increase in the number of lateral roots.
The benefits of picking are as follows:
- The plants have a more developed root system than tomato seedlings without picking;
- There is no need to thin out the seedlings;
- We discard weak and diseased seedlings, leaving only healthy plants.
In tomatoes grown from pruned seedlings, the root is well developed in breadth, covers a larger volume of soil, and therefore has a larger feeding area.It is located in the top fertile and warm layer of soil, which usually allows you to get the harvest several days earlier.
What are the advantages of tomato seedlings grown without picking?
Without picking, seedlings are grown just as successfully; its main advantages are:
- Saving time spent on picking;
- Good development of the main taproot, which was not pinched;
- Typically, tomatoes that have not been picked are more adapted to growing in unfavorable conditions.
This is especially important if we rarely visit the site or have problems with watering.
Three ways to grow tomato seedlings without picking
There are probably more such methods, for example, some plant seeds in peat tablets. We will introduce you to the most common methods; they can easily be modified and supplemented to suit your own needs. We will also offer a short video for viewing on this topic.
For all methods, it is necessary to first prepare soil suitable for growing tomato seedlings, disinfect and sterilize it.
Method 1. Planting seedlings in separate cups
This method would be the best if the cups did not take up much space. It's good if you want to grow 10-20 bushes. What if 200 or 500? This method is not suitable for those who grow a lot of seedlings and do not have a separate room with good lighting for this.
Take pots or glasses with a volume of at least 0.5 liters, preferably 1.0 liters. Make drainage holes and fill them 1/3 full with damp soil.Pre-disinfected and soaked until swelling or sprouted tomato seeds (seeds covered with a colored shell are planted dry) plant 3 pieces at a time, deepening them by 1 cm.
When the seedlings sprout and grow a little, carefully cut off the excess shoots with nail scissors, leaving the best ones. Even among experienced gardeners, there are those who step on the same rake every year - planting two tomatoes in one hole. Believe me, if a person has been doing this for decades, knowing full well that it is better to plant one plant at a time, it is useless to fight it. It’s better to leave two sprouts at a time.
Next, as the tomato grows, you will pour soil into cups or pots. In this case, additional roots will be formed, but the main root will not be damaged.
Method 2. Growing seedlings without picking in boxes
If you need a lot of seedlings, you can grow them without picking directly in boxes. To do this, fill them 1/3 with moist soil and plant the prepared seeds to a depth of 1 cm very rarely. Try to place tomato seeds at the same distance from each other.
Then, when the seedlings grow a little, install in box cardboard partitions so that the tomato roots do not intertwine with each other and are not injured when planting in the ground. Add soil to the seedlings as they grow as indicated earlier.
Watch a short but very good video on growing tomatoes without picking:
Method 3. Growing seedlings without picking in film
You can grow seedlings without picking in film cut into pieces of approximately 15x25 cm. To do this, place a few spoons of prepared wet soil on the film, wrap it in an envelope and place it in a low tray close to each other. Plant 3 tomato seeds in each “diaper”.
Next, leave 1 strong sprout and, as necessary, unfold the bag and add soil there.
Sowing tomatoes directly into the ground
An article on growing tomato seedlings without picking would be incomplete without mentioning planting seeds directly into open ground.
Tomato seeds are sown in the ground when the threat of spring frost has passed. Their sit down either 3-4 seeds at a distance at which the tomatoes will bear fruit later, or at a greater distance with the seedlings being picked directly to a permanent place.
Thus, only the earliest ripening low-growing varieties are planted. Moreover, the possibility of such cultivation should be indicated by the manufacturer on the bag of seeds. With seeds collected with your own hands, you can experiment as you like.
