Seedlings on the windowsill - without rushing to a bountiful harvest
Long before the arrival of heat and the start of work on the land plots, many summer residents are already opening the season, starting to grow seedlings on the windowsills city apartments. Since the future harvest depends on the quality of plants grown in not the most comfortable conditions, the process does not require rush, but serious preparation for it is simply necessary.
How to grow seedlings on a windowsill?
Often, summer residents start sowing almost in the middle of winter, motivating this with the desire to get large and strong seedlings, ready to continue growing and start bearing fruit without serious problems of acclimatization. However, instead of this, in the spring, many summer residents have to take out overgrown, literally creeping plants with pale green foliage and a root system tangled in a dense ball.
To prevent this from happening, you can follow one of two strategies:
- The first is not to rush to sowing, but to create the most favorable conditions for seedlings for growth;
- The second is to slow down the growth of seedlings in every possible way at early sowing dates in order to neutralize the negative consequences of a lack of light and prolonged cultivation.
Obviously, the first method is preferable. Firstly, daylight hours naturally increase by spring, which means that the seedlings are less likely to be elongated and frail, on the other hand, you will not need to inhibit plant growth by reducing watering and temperature.
AND lights for seedlings on the windowsill
If, at the same time, the seedlings are provided with other optimal conditions: nutrition, watering, air humidity and temperature, then the plants will respond with friendly growth, will be strong and ready to give a good harvest.
Sowing time
According to this strategy, seedlings can be grown on the windowsill as soon as possible.
- Tomatoes medium and late ripening from sowing to planting in the ground takes from 55 to 60 days, early varieties and hybrids grow 10 to 15 days faster.
- Sweet pepper grows in 65 - 75 days. This crop is not as sensitive to stretching when growing seedlings on a windowsill. Pepper seedlings can also be planted with buds, however, it is better to remove the flowers.
- All types of celery sow 70 - 80 days before transplanting into the ground.
- Eggplant needs 60 days.
- Cabbage salad - about 40 days.
- Cucumbers, pumpkins, zucchini, as well as sweet melons: melons and watermelons are ready for planting in a month. Moreover, with such a rapid growth, it is better to immediately sow these crops in individual containers.
- White-headed early maturing and colored cabbage ready for transplanting to the beds in 45 days, and mid-season or late varieties in forty days.
- All types of bows sown in the third decade of March or a little earlier.
As for the second concept, growing seedlings on the windowsill begins very early, and in order to restrain stretching, they reduce the room temperature. Seedlings, for example cabbage, after pecking should be kept at 6 - 10 °, which is not easy to implement in an apartment, which means that watering is also reduced, giving the plants moisture when they just start to wither.
Obviously, this is not the best way.
What is required to grow seedlings on a windowsill?
But in any case, it is important to carefully prepare for this important matter. Namely:
- Calculate how many seedlings are required;
- Prepare the ground and fertilizers;
- Stock up on seedling containers;
- Consider ensuring the proper level of humidity and temperature;
- Prepare seeds of decent quality and disinfect them before sowing.
The minimum set of equipment required for a summer resident to obtain healthy seedlings on the windowsill includes:
- Shelves additionally fixed to the window or seedling racks;
- Illumination system based on phytolamps, LEDs or fluorescent light sources;
- A timer that sets the duration of the artificial backlight;
- Sowing trays and containers for planting plants after picking;
- Landing boxes heating mats;
- Fluorescent lamps;
- Chains or cords to adjust the suspension height of the luminaires.
The problem of lighting seedlings on the windowsill
The sprouts emerging from the seeds do not have much strength to grow. And if they receive minerals from the soil, then organic matter must be produced during photosynthesis, which requires light. Within a week or two after germination, the seedlings are ready for picking, however, with a lack of light, the plants turn out to be frail and more susceptible to root rot disease.
Ideally, seedlings in the first days require round-the-clock lighting, and then it is better for plants to provide 16-hour lighting. It is clear that March ten or April thirteen hours are not enough. Therefore, it is necessary by all means to provide access to light for plants.
How to organize lighting for seedlings on the windowsill?
In nature, plants live in conditions of sunlight, consisting of waves of different lengths. The blue and violet parts of the spectrum are designed to regulate growth, helping the sprouts to be strong. The red spectrum affects germination.
Therefore, the entire spectrum is important, and it is necessary not only to make the most of the light entering the room, but also to give the seedlings an effective illumination. It makes sense to install a matte screen to diffuse light and use reflective structures such as foil-covered insulating material.
However, special artificial lighting is indispensable. In the conditions of the middle lane, the illumination for seedlings on the windowsills of residential buildings and apartments is important up to transplanting seedlings to the site.
At the same time, ordinary, with a tungsten filament, lamps are the worst choice, they give only a small fraction of the natural spectrum, but more than compensate for this with an excess of thermal radiation, which makes the seedlings stretch.
The most effective are specialized phytolamps, fluorescent or LED devices, which, moreover, are more economical.
How to place seedlings?
It is logical that it is not worth growing seedlings on the windowsill located on the north wall of the building. However, the health of the seedlings and the future harvest depend both on the area allocated to each seedling and on the volume of the container in which the plant's root system develops.
On a fairly spacious 1 meter by 30 cm windowsill, you can arrange about 40 bushes of tomatoes or peppers, but the needs of summer residents are usually much greater. The way out of this situation can be:
- Expansion of the window sill due to cantilever structures;
- Installing another shelf approximately in the middle of the window frame;
- Ready-made or homemade seedling racks on the windowsill
At the same time, the last two options are preferable, since all plants are easily accessible for care and watering, they do not interfere with each other and do not shade the light, and it is easy to install a lighting system above the shelves.
Containers and seedling boxes
Any containers with a volume of up to 0.2 liters, in which seedlings are often grown, are insufficient for the development of high-quality roots; they often intertwine, forming a dense ball, which, when transplanted into the ground, mostly die off. This means that the seedlings are more difficult to acclimate and will subsequently give a weak harvest.
In addition to sufficient capacity, containers for growing seedlings simply must have:
- Sufficient and very reliable drainage, preventing moisture stagnation;
- Opaque walls that protect the root system from overheating and cooling, as well as positively affecting its growth;
- Sufficient rigidity to ensure a secure position of the plants when moving or any ground movement.
Watering seedlings
Until the sprouts hatch, the crops are watered daily with a weak solution of a biological cocktail or a growth stimulator. Then, depending on the air temperature and the condition of the soil in the containers, the plants are watered or sprayed up to three times a week.
To ensure sufficient moisture for each plant after the pick, you can organize a kind of watering system from the pallet using plastic bottles and a thick woolen thread.
Air humidity
For most crops, the acceptable moisture level is around 70%. Unfortunately, in no living space, especially when the heating is on, this level is difficult to achieve.
Therefore, due to dry air, seedlings on the windowsill accumulate an excessive amount of salts, and soil salinity occurs, which looks like a brown bloom on the surface and provokes diseases of seedlings, especially cabbage.
To increase the humidity of the air, be sure to use household humidifiers or install a basin of water under the battery, into which a thick towel should be dipped with one end, and the other end should be laid out on the heating device.
Hardening seedlings
Before getting to a permanent place, seedlings grown on a windowsill must necessarily undergo hardening on a loggia, a glazed balcony or in a simple greenhouse.
For this, the containers are exposed for at least two or three days for several hours in close to natural conditions.