Sowing pepper: what you need to know

Before sowing pepper, you need to prepare nutrient soil for plants. You can mix garden humus with a small amount of wood ash and sand (on a bucket of humus 1-2 cups of additive) or use the ready-made purchased top dressing.

Also, care must be taken to ensure that the plant is getting enough light. Usually boxes with seedlings are placed in a room that looks out on the sunny side. If sowing seeds of pepper occurs on a small area, then you do not need to strive to get as much seedling as possible. When plants start to form, they will become crowded, they will oppress and shade each other, which will necessarily worsen the quality of seedlings.

The light day for seedlings should last 12-13 hours. But in February and with cloudy weather it is impossible to achieve this. Therefore, fluorescent lamps with a power of 40-80 kW, which are suspended above the shoots at a distance of 10 cm and are switched on from 8 am to 8 pm, are used to increase the daylight. You can get even more light by using foil. If the plants are located at the window, the foil is placed behind them and reflects the sunlight. With artificial lighting, it is fixed over the lamps. To prevent plants from stretching in the direction of light, the boxes with seedlings need to be rotated periodically. When the light day increases, you should cover the seedlings from 19-20 pm. To do this, you can make covers of dark paper or material.

It should be remembered that the timing of sowing peppers depends on the plant variety. The role and timing of planting seedlings in the open ground play: for the middle band this is the first decade of February, for the southern regions - the beginning of March. If you are going to plant a vegetable in a greenhouse, then the seeding of pepper on seedlings must begin in the second decade of February. It is possible to sow peppers in March, but in this case additional lighting will be needed for about a month - from the moment the shoots appear and until the seedlings are piqued.

Seedlings are grown in boxes or in special cassettes. The soil mixture is poured into a layer of about 10 cm, flattened and slightly compacted. If sowing of pepper takes place in a box, then you need to make grooves with a distance of 5-7 cm from each other and pour a fertilizer solution. Then in grooves make grooves 0.5-1 cm every 2-3 cm, put the seeds and cover with soil mixture. Some truck farmers, to accelerate the germination, pour the seeds with hot water (about 60 ° C), and most of them immediately give sprouts.

After the sowing of pepper is made, a box with seedlings is better covered with a film, creating a kind of greenhouse. Watered seedlings once a week with warm water, avoiding excessive watering and excess moisture. The air temperature in the greenhouse should be within 25-27 ° C, then after a week or two shoots will appear. At a temperature of 20 ° C, sprouts can be seen after 18-20 days, and at 16 ° C - only after a month. With the emergence of shoots, the film is removed and put the box on a sunny place. In the first three days, the temperature should be lowered to 17-18 ° C, so that the root system of plants develops well, and after that the temperature is raised again to 24-25 ° C.

When the first two leaves appear in the seedlings, and after about a month, they will be ready for a pick. A few hours before the transplant, the plants need to be watered, as seedlings can only be selected from moist soil. Dry does not stick to roots and can leave them without food.

Dive the seedlings in small containers of 10x10 or less: plastic cups, pots, sachets of juice or milk. The soil should have the same composition as it was during the planting of the seeds. Filled containers are poured with a nutrient solution (3 liters of water take 1 tablespoon of sodium humate and 1 teaspoon of wood ash or potassium sulfate). Then the shoots are gently broken and pulled out with a clod of earth. It is very important not to damage the roots, since they recover for a long time. In the middle of a new container, make a deepening and plant the seedlings to the cotyledon leaves. After picking the plants must be watered and put in the shade for several days. Watering of seedlings is carried out every 5-6 days, combining with top dressing - one pot costs a half-spoonful of ashes.