7 recipes for soil for seedlings that you can prepare now

The right soil for seedlings is the beginning of beginnings. Young seedlings receive the necessary nutrition from the soil. Their health and your future harvest depend on it. But the "tastes" of different crops are different, and this should be taken into account when preparing the soil.



What should the ideal soil be like? For germination, a seed needs two main conditions: optimal temperature and humidity. That is, the soil should absorb moisture well and hold it for a long time, but at the same time provide enough air so that the seed does not rot. In addition, it will be difficult for young roots to germinate in dense soil, which means that the soil should be light and loose.

With a small volume of soil in which the seedlings develop and a fairly high sowing density, a sufficient amount of nutrients is needed to ensure the growth and development of seedlings.



The «correct» acidity of the soil is also important - if the pH balance is disturbed, plants will not be able to fully absorb some macronutrients, their growth will slow down. For most crops, neutral acidity is optimal - pH 6.5-7.

And last but not least - the soil should be free of pathogens: weeds, fungal spores, pathogenic bacteria, pests and their larvae.



The main advantage of preparing the soil mixture yourself is saving money. Yes, this is a troublesome business: finding all the necessary components, making sure of their quality, mixing in the right proportions is not as easy as it may seem at first glance. But everything is possible if you know exactly what ingredients you need and where to find them.

You should not take soil from the garden or vegetable garden for growing seedlings. Firstly, it most likely contains a minimum of nutrients, since previous harvests have already “eaten” all the most useful ones. And secondly, the soil on the site can be contaminated with pests and pathogenic microbes.

Suitable soil for seedlings can be prepared by mixing the following components in different proportions:

The listed ingredients are “mined” in natural areas or purchased in garden stores (except for the last two).

The components for the soil mixture can be prepared in the fall and stored separately until spring, when it is time to use them. Or mix all the parts and keep the finished soil in bags right outside or in an unheated barn - frosty winter will become an excellent disinfection measure in this case. In the spring, before use, you will need to bring the soil into a warm room, let it thaw, sift and distribute it into containers.
 

Now let's see what preferences the most popular garden crops have for soil composition.

1. Tomatoes
For example, tomatoes love soil that contains a lot of organic matter, nitrogen and potassium. For them, prepare a mixture of turf soil, peat and humus in a ratio of 1:2:1, to which 0.5 l of wood ash and 3 tbsp of superphosphate are added.

Also suitable for tomato seedlings is a combination of equal parts of turf soil, compost and sand with the addition of 50 g of superphosphate, 20 g of potassium salt and 10 g of ammonium nitrate. We indicate the amount of fertilizers per 10 l of substrate.

2. Cucumbers
Cucumbers will like a mixture of turf and leaf soil, compost and vermiculite (proportion 3:3:3:1). You can also mix peat, humus and sawdust (2:2:1), seasoned with a glass of wood ash, urea, potassium sulfate and superphosphate (1 teaspoon per 10 liters of soil).

3. Pepper
Peppers will feel good in soil consisting of turf soil, sand and peat (1:1:2), with the addition of 60 g of superphosphate, 40 g of potassium sulfate and 30 g of ammonium nitrate per bucket of the mixture.

Alternatively, for pepper seedlings you can use a mixture of humus and turf soil (2:1 or 3:2), as well as a combination of peat, turf soil, humus and rotted sawdust (proportion 4:2:1:1).

4. Cabbage
A substrate made from turf soil, compost and sand in a ratio of 1:2:1 is suitable for cabbage, to which you need to add ash or lime (at the rate of 2 cups per 10 liters of soil).

5. Eggplants
Eggplants are a capricious heat-loving crop, their seeds germinate rather slowly even when soaked, and they also lose their germination capacity faster than the seeds of other vegetables. Growing eggplants through seedlings allows you to reduce the time until harvest. Soil consisting of humus, turf soil, peat and rotted sawdust (in a ratio of 2:1:1:0.5) is suitable for them.

6. Garden strawberries
It is more common to buy ready-made strawberry seedlings for planting in a garden bed, but this crop can also be grown from seeds. To do this, you will have to tinker with it, but the result may surprise and please you.

To sow garden strawberries, make a soil mixture of turf soil, sand and lowland peat (proportion 2:1:1). Of the purchased options, a substrate for begonias or violets will do.

7. Universal mixture
If making a substrate for each crop separately seems too tedious for you, try making a universal soil. To do this, you can take 3 parts of turf soil, 2 parts of humus and peat, 1 part of compost and sand - mix and add 1 glass of wood ash per 10 liters of the finished mixture.
 

To increase fertility, you can add biohumus (vermicompost) to the finished substrate - a product of organic waste processing by a Californian worm. This bioadditive contains beneficial microorganisms and is used to enrich and improve the structure of the soil.



Sand, perlite or vermiculite help ensure proper air exchange and make the soil looser. Take coarse-grained river sand (not from a quarry!), before use it is washed until the water is clean. By replacing 1/10 of the total volume of soil with sand, you can avoid the formation of a hard crust on the surface of the earth when watering. Perlite is added at a rate of 30% of the total volume of the soil mixture.

After mixing the components, you should check the acidity level of the finished soil - after all, different vegetable and garden crops like to grow on soils with different pH. To determine the acidity level, use a household pH meter or a regular litmus strip.

You can deoxidize the soil by adding limestone, dolomite flour (1-2 tablespoons per 10 liters of soil) or ash (1-2 cups per the same volume).
 

After adding all the necessary ingredients to the soil, it must be disinfected. There are different ways to do this.

Steaming: place the container with soil in the microwave for 15-20 minutes or pour boiling water through a fine sieve.

Calcination: heat the soil mixture in the oven for half an hour at a temperature of 70 to 90 ° C.

Etching: pour the substrate with a solution of hydrogen peroxide (20 ml per 1 liter of water) or potassium permanganate. It should be remembered that potassium permanganate increases the acidity of the soil - after the procedure, it will need to be adjusted.

The methods described above are suitable for disinfecting the soil in the spring. For the soil mixture prepared in the fall, the best option is freezing - take the prepared soil outside during a period of severe frosts for about a week, then return it to the warmth, and then take it out into the frost again. For full protection against pathogens, it is advisable to repeat this procedure several times.