Sweet pepper (Bulgarian) - planting dates for seedlings and the lunar calendar 2024

4.05.2024 Lunar sowing calendar for the gardener for 2024

In our climate, peppers are grown by seedlings, which you can buy in the markets from greenhouses. But some farmers grow it themselves: it is important for someone to follow the process themselves, others want to save money on the purchase, and the third one is basically the lack of chemicals used in industrial cultivation.

This culture is not the simplest; it requires knowledge of its features. Among them, one of the important questions is when to start work with bell pepper, which is also called sweet, so as not to be late with the time for planting seeds for seedlings. It is worth remembering that this plant is thermophilic, with a long growing season, requiring 100-150 days of positive temperatures and a long daylight hours.

Content

1 What factors affect the quality of seedlings of sweet pepper and is it always necessary to plant it
2 Dates of planting sweet pepper seeds for seedlings
3 Planting bell pepper for seedlings according to the lunar calendar in 2024
4 How to plant seeds for seedlings and further care
5 Common Growing Questions

What factors affect the quality of seedlings of sweet pepper and is it always necessary to plant it

Healthy promising seedlings are the result of a number of conditions. If you ignore them, then the plants will not receive proper nutrition and grow weak, which will lead to a meager crop or its complete absence. Factors that affect the quality of seedlings of bell pepper:

Seed quality. It is important to choose a quality producer, sort weak and empty seeds. Soaking the seedlings will help soaking the seeds with subsequent germination. This procedure can be enhanced by hardening, moving the container with wet seeds to the lower shelf of the refrigerator, then to a warm room.
Pepper seeds
Soil quality. The composition of the mixture may be in different percentages of turf land, humus, peat, sand. The main thing is to achieve the effect of friability. To do this, add vermiculite and agroperlite to the soil - ingredients of natural origin that provide moisture retention and good breathability, which is important for plant root nutrition.
A place to grow. It should provide good lighting, humidity and temperature. It is most convenient to implement all this in a heated greenhouse, where you can adjust the temperature and install additional lighting. But the windowsill can also come up, just to grow seedlings on it will cost some great effort.

But there is another important point that ensures success in growing pepper. The long period from germination to harvest does not coincide with the frost-free season in our latitudes. A pepper will not tolerate subzero temperatures at all, and even at low plus points it will feel bad.

Seedlings — Therefore, the only way out is to sow it indoors, that is, to grow seedlings in advance and plant them on the street when the threat of frost has passed.

If sown in open ground, after the establishment of stable heat, bypassing the seedling period in a warm room, then the plants will not have time to go through their life cycle and simply will not bear fruit.

Dates of planting sweet pepper seeds for seedlings

From practicing farmers one can hear different sowing dates.Some call the beginning of February, while others sound the dates of mid-March. In fact, the range is large enough and captures both months. Sowing time depends on many factors.

General dates

The average sowing dates are considered to be the end of February - the beginning of March. This start is sufficient for seed germination and seedling development to the point where the pepper is ready for planting in open ground. This usually happens in early June.

But if seedlings are prepared for the greenhouse, then it can be planted even in April. Provided that the soil is warmed there. This can be helped by pouring warm water on the ground or including heating. For greenhouse peppers, seeding dates are shifted towards February, even towards its first decade, so that 60-80 days have passed from seeding to transplantation.

There is another option, in which peppers are planted in open ground in May, when there is still a risk of plant death from frost. In this case, the owner will constantly monitor the weather and cover the landing with agrofiber, if there is a cooling. This is a time-consuming option, but if it is chosen consciously, then you can sow pepper in the middle of the sludge at the end of February.

What can move the deadlines

But not only the place of pepper planting - open ground or greenhouse - is distinguished by the sowing time. There are other factors:

Variety of pepper. In general, they can be divided into early and late. Accordingly, early varieties have a shorter growing season, or in other words, the time from the beginning of growth to fruiting. This means that they can be sown at a later date, in March.
And vice versa: the late variety is sown early, its dates are shifted to February.
Climatic zone. In the southern regions, it is possible to sow earlier because of the earlier planting of seedlings in open ground. The northern regions wait for stable heat on the street longer than the southerners, it is more logical for them to start working on pepper seeds in March.
A rather unstable factor is a long-term weather forecast for the next season. A decade ago, it was quite possible to use it to understand when to sow, whether it is necessary to shift this action in time, if the early heat is coming, or vice versa - frost will linger. Unfortunately, climate change today makes the forecast very inaccurate, so using it is unreliable.

In any case, you need to carefully calculate all the nuances, guided by academic knowledge and the experience of real practitioners.

How dangerous is it if pepper is planted later or earlier

The fruiting time of pepper comes according to the number of days of its growing season. For each variety, it is different, and the sowing date does not change it. But you can ruin the situation.

If the seeds are sown earlier than the required time, then for them the time of growth in pots in anticipation of planting in a permanent place will be delayed. This means that the growing bush will become crowded in the dishes, there will be a lack of nutrition. Overgrown seedlings then take root worse in the garden. Also, flowers and ovaries will appear on such peppers before transplanting, and after moving to the beds they will not withstand stress and fall off, weakening the pepper and putting off the first fruits.

Remember!

Being late with sowing will most often lead to late flowering and fruit ovary, which simply will not have time to increase the required volume and ripen before the onset of autumn cold.

Planting bell pepper for seedlings according to the lunar calendar in 2024

There is another source of information about when to conduct this or that action with plants in the current year - this is the lunar calendar for 2019. It, like all the past, is based on observations of the influence of the moon on different stages of plant development.

How reliable the information in this calendar is is an open question. Many supporters of scientific justifications discard the possibility of an Earth satellite interfering in the life of the planet, consider such judgments to be quackery and profanity. But for the other part of the farmers, evidence is enough, and they use this calendar from year to year.

In the course is a study of its position in the zodiac constellations. That is why it is not enough just to look at the celestial body and decide what kind of garden culture to do today. The calculations here are based on astronomy and differ year by year. Therefore, for planting bell pepper every year, the dates are different.

For 2019, the lunar calendar offers such a time for sowing pepper seedlings: in February it is the 15th, 16th and 28th, in March - 1, 8, 9 and 12. Further transplantation of the grown seedlings into the greenhouse is recommended by the calendar in May: 8, 12-18 , and on the street, in the garden - the same dates as for the greenhouse, plus added June 13th.

How to plant seeds for seedlings and further care

After determining the time of planting and the acquisition of seeds, the moment comes to act. The algorithm for working with pepper is as follows:

soaking seeds in fungicide for half an hour, in a growth stimulator - for a day, germination in wet tissue - 7-10 days;
filling well-planted loose soil mix containers for sowing: it is better to have separate cups, pepper does not require a large area for roots and does not like transplanting, otherwise the owner not only risks the health of seedlings, but also adds diving work when the seedlings grow in two pairs of real leaves;
Pepper sowing soil
sowing hatched seeds, covering them with foil and installing in a warm place up to +25 degrees;
when the plants sprout, they need to be exposed and lower the temperature to 17 degrees, while removing the cover;
pour with warm, settled water as the soil dries, while making sure that the drainage holes regularly remove excess fluid, otherwise the roots will suffocate in waterlogged soil;
feed with mineral fertilizers once every two weeks;
if small cups, peat tablets or cassettes were chosen for sowing, and the bushes were already growing, then they need to be transplanted into larger containers by transshipment.

A few weeks before the deadline, seedlings need to start hardening, preparing for life in the air. To do this, more often open windows, make crops on the balcony, leave at night to get acquainted with the differences in day and night temperatures. If seedlings initially lived in a greenhouse, then gradually reduce its heating and open windows and doors for ventilation.

Common Growing Questions

How to determine the timing of planting seedlings in your region?

The easiest way to find them out is by looking at periodical or online gardening publications. It usually publishes information from practitioners. It will also be useful to talk with neighbors who have been growing pepper for more than one season and can share their experiences.

Do I need to disinfect the soil before sowing the seeds?

Yes, unfortunately, there can be pest eggs, fungi, viruses and bacteria in the garden land and in the purchase land.To protect the seedlings from such a danger, it is recommended to calcinate the soil in the oven at 100 degrees for an hour or several times to pour over it with boiling water. Then, after cooling, it is advisable to add fertilizer to the mixture in order to restore the microflora.

Sweet pepper is enough valuable, healthy and tasty vegetable to agree to the complex actions of growing it. Every year the experience will be overgrown with new techniques, and soon you will turn into a good specialist, delighting the whole family with a harvest.