Cabbage is a vegetable that is often called the queen of the garden. This is easy to explain, because cabbage is a storehouse of vitamins and nutrients, and how many different dishes can be prepared with just one head of green beauty? Not to mention the fact that cabbage can be fermented, and at the same time, it does not lose its useful properties.
But in order for the body to get the maximum benefit from what cabbage can give, it is important to properly grow and care for it. Step-by-step instruction, how to grow seedlings of cabbage at home will help to avoid gross mistakes in this matter, as well as to get a ripe, rich and maximum healthy yield.
When to sow cabbage
Cabbage cultivation begins with the timing of sowing. In this matter, it is very important to comply with these deadlines. After all, if the seeds are planted too early, then they may die, and if you are late with ridicule, there is a risk that they will not sprout.
Cabbage seeds germinate quickly enough, the results can be seen after 5 days from the moment of planting. Cabbage is of early varieties, which can be divided into early ripe, late ripe and mid-ripening. But, in order for them to ascend in the garden, they need some time to grow indoors. Early ripe and late ripening varieties require 50 days for this, but mid-ripening varieties require from 30 to 40 days.
Early ripe cabbage varieties are planted on seedlings in the middle of the first spring month. In mid-ripening varieties, the dates for planting will be later: this is the twentieth of April. Until planting in open ground, the cabbage grows in boxes on the windowsill, then it needs a pick. In early May, you can already make a cold nursery to prepare the plant for transplantation into the open ground.
But if variety of cabbage mid-season, it sits in early April. But, picking any kind of cabbage should be carried out only when the first four true leaves appear on it.
What soil is needed
The second paragraph, in a step-by-step instruction on how to grow cabbage seedlings at home, involves preparing the right soil for the cabbage. The plant loves fertile neutral soil, and only this. To grow seedlings on the windowsill, you need to mix peat, turf soil, and sand in the same proportions.
Advice! To make the soil safer, before planting the seeds, it must be treated with a weak solution of potassium permanganate.
How to prepare and plant seeds
In order to get good seedlings for cabbage, you should give preference only to large seeds of the plant.
Large seeds, before planting them, must be wrapped in gauze bags, placed in a jar of water, heated to a temperature of 50 degrees. Then, leave the seeds as they are for 4 hours. At the end of time, the seeds are “released" from gauze bags, placed on a saucer and sent to the refrigerator for 12 hours. This procedure hardens the plant and contributes to its rapid germination.
Seeds are planted in shallow boxes filled with suitable soil. The top layer of the soil must be leveled, made grooves in it, slightly watered with a weak solution of potassium permanganate. Seeds are laid in grooves to a depth of one centimeter and sprinkled with soil on top. Next, the containers must be covered with polyethylene.
Before the first shoots, you can ventilate the boxes, but you can not remove the film completely. Subject to just such an instruction, it will be fashionable to detect the first emergence already at 5th of it from the moment of seed planting.
When the first shoots of cabbage appear, boxes with seedlings must be moved to a colder place. At the same time, it is important that the cool place be well lit, since the cabbage loves the light. Also, the temperature in the new habitat of cabbage should not be higher than 20 degrees. Only under such conditions will the plant grow strong and grow rapidly.
How to care for seedlings
How to grow cabbage seedlings at home, the step-by-step instruction includes the rules for caring for the plant, without which you can not achieve a positive result.
Without light, for example, cabbage will die. Therefore, for seedlings, it is advisable to choose the brightest place in the house. Only by fulfilling this condition can we move on.
In the first week of seedling growth, a temperature regime of 18 to 20 degrees Celsius should be maintained. In the following weeks, you can lower the temperature to 14 degrees Celsius.
Cabbage does not like heavy watering, so it needs it only when the earth is completely dry. A week before the seedlings are transplanted into the open ground, watering of the plant stops.
Twice the seedlings need to be fed with mineral fertilizers: the first time after 7 days after emergence, the second time - 7 days before transplanting into open ground.
Step by step instructions how grow seedlings of cabbage at home, it does not differ much from the instructions for growing other vegetable crops, but it has its own nuances, on which the whole special process is built. Only observing all these nuances to get to really grow the queen of all the gardens - cabbage!
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