How to plant zucchini for seedlings at home

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

How to plant zucchini for seedlings at home - this question is of interest to those who want to harvest two weeks earlier. The information will also be useful to those who live in regions with an unfavorable climate, for example, in the Urals, Siberia or the Moscow region.

When to plant zucchini for seedlings

You should not rush to plant zucchini for seedlings, since from the moment of sowing to disembarkation to a permanent place, it should take from 20 to 25 days. For comparison: you need to plant tomato seedlings at the age of 50-60 days.

As a rule, at home, you can plant zucchini for seedlings in April and May, but it all depends on the climatic conditions of a particular region:

1. In the middle lane, including the Moscow region, zucchini are planted in open ground at the end of May, so it is better to sow seeds for seedlings at the end of April.
2. In the Urals, Siberia, as well as in the Leningrad Region, seedlings are planted in a permanent place only in early June, which means that the dates for sowing seeds are shifted to the first ten days of May.
3. In the south, the warmest of all, in this region, seedlings are planted at the end of April, so the sowing of seeds falls on the end of March.

You can choose an auspicious day for planting seeds according to the lunar calendar. And unlike root crops, zucchini more "love" the growing moon.

Seed selection

Without planting material, it will not work to grow your own crop; you can prepare the seeds yourself or buy them.

When buying, they pay attention not to the colorful picture, but to the description of the variety and other qualities:

• disease resistance;
• yield;
• cold resistance;
• storage conditions;
• can this variety be grown in a specific region.

It is also worth considering that there are common varieties, and there are hybrids that do not give offspring. If you use their seeds, then vegetables of a completely different taste and quality will grow from them. Hybrids are marked on the packaging "F1".

Some manufacturers carry out seed treatment:

• calibrated were selected by size;
• in the form of pills - the shell contains stimulants and fertilizers;
• plasma - resistant to fungi and have good germination;
• bubbled - enriched with oxygen.

Another point that should be taken into account when buying is the manufacturer, since planting material of domestic and imported production is supplied to the market.

Domestic seeds are adapted to Russian climatic conditions, enriched with flavonoids and vitamins. But they have a low germination rate and falsification of goods is increasingly common. Import producers supply the market with new varieties of good quality, with high disease resistance. Poor quality is characteristic of the products of Chinese manufacturers.

The best varieties of domestic selection include the following: Belogor, Nemchinovsky, Belukha, Waterfall, Gribovsky, imported: Golden Cup, Astoria, Zebra, Iskander, Nero de Milano.

Seed preparation

Before you learn how to sow zucchini for seedlings at home, it is important to properly prepare the planting material itself. You can apply seeds in dry form, but if there is confidence in their quality.

Material preparation stages:

1. Calibration. The seeds are simply sorted out, small and empty are thrown away.
2. Disinfection. The seed coat may contain pathogens that need to be removed. It is not necessary to use a solution of potassium permanganate, as for other vegetable crops, it is enough to hold them for several hours in hot water (temperature 50 ° C), and then in cold.
3. Hardening. A useful procedure, especially for thermophilic plants. We just leave the wet seeds in the refrigerator for a day. This will activate their survival mechanism and speed up the growing season.
4. Germination is an effective treatment of planting material, which will allow to identify seeds that are not capable of germination. To do this, they are placed between two layers of gauze, which is well moistened with water. Cover with a bag and leave warm on a saucer. After 2 days, the seeds will germinate, they can be planted, and those that did not hatch even on the 3rd or 4th day should not be used.

Some summer residents treat seeds with growth stimulants, but this procedure is not necessary for zucchini.

Soil preparation

Any living plant feels comfortable only in fertile soil. Before sowing zucchini for seedlings, it is important to prepare soil, which you can buy or prepare at home.

When buying, it is important to pay attention to the composition: it should be a balanced mixture of peat, sand and useful trace elements. At the same time, be soft, crumbly, without debris and large particles.

If you need to prepare the soil yourself, you will need:

• 50% peat;
• 30% humus;
• 10% semi-matured sawdust;
• 10% sod land.

Also, mineral fertilizers must be added to the soil: nitrate, potassium, superphosphate. A week before sowing, it is important to disinfect it by spilling it with hot water, a solution of potassium permanganate, special preparations, or warm it up in the oven.

Choice of containers

Zucchini is a crop that does not tolerate transplanting well. In order to exclude picking at home, it is important to plant a vegetable for seedlings in a container suitable for melons and gourds.

Individual containers with a volume of 0.5 liters are more suitable for zucchini. These can be ordinary plastic cups, bottles, peat or plastic pots. The main thing is that in each container there is a hole for the outflow of excess moisture, with the exception of peat pots.

Seedlings grown in peat pots do not need to be removed during transplantation. The pots dissolve easily in the ground, the main thing is not to stumble upon a fake when buying.

We plant seeds for seedlings - step by step instructions

There is nothing difficult in how to plant zucchini with seeds for seedlings at home. The main thing is to follow the instructions with step by step photos:

1. We check the container for the presence of a hole for the outflow of excess moisture, with the exception of peat pots.
2. We pour drainage in the form of perlite and brick chips at the bottom, the layer thickness is 1.5 cm.
3. Pour the prepared soil, leave a distance of 1.5 cm to the edge of the container.
4. We make a hole 2-3 cm deep, plant seeds and cover them with soil.
5. Pour with settled water.
6. Cover with foil and transfer to a warm place.

The temperature in the room where the seedlings will stand should not be lower than 20 degrees, and good lighting is also important. Only in such conditions, in a few days, seedlings will appear, which will grow rapidly. If you have any questions, you should watch the video or read the advice of more experienced gardeners.

Care

It is important not only to know how to plant zucchini for seedlings from seeds at home, but also how to properly care for young plants. The features of care are as follows:

1. Temperature. Any seedling loves warmth, so it is important to create favorable temperature conditions for it. After sowing - from 23 to 25 degrees, after germination - from 20 to 22 degrees.
2. Lighting. Plants love the sun, and if there is not enough natural light, then you will have to use phytolamps.
3. Watering. It is important to ensure that the soil never dries out, but watering should be moderate, since excess moisture can lead to the death of seedlings.
4. Humidity. It is not easy to control its level, therefore, the cups with seedlings from time to time need to be moved away from each other so that moist air does not stagnate between the plants.
5. Top dressing. Zucchini are fed with mineral fertilizers only 2 times, the first - 7 days after germination, the second - 10 days after the first. But if the soil is highly nutritious, then it is enough to feed the seedlings with an infusion of wood ash.

Picking squash seedlings is undesirable, since the plant tolerates even the slightest root damage very painfully.

Difficulties in growing seedlings

If you plant zucchini for seedlings at home correctly, then there should be no problems with growing it. But failures are still possible:

1. If seedlings did not appear on the 10th day after sowing, then it is pointless to wait. As a rule, this occurs due to the fact that the seeds were planted dry, but they turned out to be unusable.
2. If the seedlings are strongly stretched. There are several reasons for this: poor lighting, densely planted seeds, the room is too hot. If things have not gone too far, then the situation can be corrected by adding more light, adding soil to a container, or transplanting seedlings into a larger pot.
3. Seedlings grow very slowly. Perhaps the reason is that the room is too cold, or the plants do not have enough mineral fertilizers.
4. The seedlings wither. Such a problem may be associated with dry soil or, conversely, with excess moisture. And if the reason is overflow, then it will hardly be possible to save the plants.
5. Leaves turn yellow. If they have not completely changed the color, and the process is just beginning, then the seedlings need to be fed with saltpeter or urea, since it does not have enough nitrogen.

After the seedlings have 2-4 already real, well-developed leaves, they can be planted in a permanent place.

Outcomes

1. It is necessary to plant zucchini seedlings in a permanent place at the age of 20-25 days, so you should not rush to sow seeds.
2. Zucchini is difficult to tolerate a transplant, so it is better to grow seedlings in separate pots.
3. Before planting, you need to prepare the soil and the planting material itself.