Squash: planting and care in open ground

Zucchini (planting and care in open ground will be described in the article) is a plant of the Pumpkin family. With proper care, it can enrich the owners with a magnificent harvest. Zucchini crops, whose planting and care are unpretentious, are used to prepare various delicious dishes. True connoisseurs of culinary skills know what vegetables go well with zucchini. Due to its useful composition, zucchini culture is used in medicine and cosmetology.
 

Beginners often wonder how to plant zucchini seedlings without outside help. And unlike experienced agricultural technicians, they do not know how to care for young vegetables. As a rule, it takes up to 30 days to grow a vegetable crop in open ground or a greenhouse. Such terms apply if there are no frosts during the entire period. In a zone with an average climate, agricultural technicians can observe such weather in the spring, at the end of May. Therefore, the planting of squash crops falls in mid-April (in some regions at the beginning of the month).


 

Planting material in the form of seeds is considered the most popular. Every agricultural technician should know how to plant squash in open ground. In order for the seed material to sprout without hindrance, you need to wait until the thermometer shows +12 ... +15 degrees. If the spring is early, then the seeds are planted already on May 5, if late - after the 20th.

At what distance to plant squash, how to plant and care for - all these questions worry novice gardeners. The vegetable is sown into the soil in several stages. The interval should be 2 weeks. This will allow you to have a guarantee that the squash crops will definitely sprout.
 

Planting zucchini in the country is very simple. First, you need to prepare the planting material. The easiest way is if these are seeds. They quickly sprout in warm soil. For this, the soil must have time to warm up in the sun. But you can speed up the process yourself.

You can prepare seeds for planting using several methods:

You should prepare water with a temperature of 50 degrees. The seeds are dipped in it for half a day. After that, the seed material is dipped in cold water for a couple of minutes. This method will harden the vegetable crop. You can put the planting material in a solution of a growth stimulator. 24 hours will be enough. Then the seed material is washed, dried and planted in the ground.

There is another option for processing zucchini seeds - a nitrophoska composition. The planting material is dipped in it for the whole night. Do not worry if the seeds have swollen, that's how it should be. And the last, most popular method is to keep the seeds in a damp gauze. Additional moisture will allow the seed to sprout faster.


 

Warmth and light are what zucchini love. Where is the best place to plant them? When choosing a place in the garden, it is worth considering the degree of illumination of the area.

The hole for planting seeds should be well lit. There should be no drafts there. Regardless of what type of zucchini crop needs to be planted, any of them will grow well on a slope on the southern or southwestern side. The light function should be bright, since due to insufficient light, the fruits will ripen longer.

For sowing zucchini, the soil must be quite nutritious. What should be the care of zucchini in the open ground and watering:

It is best to process the soil for planting the crop in the fall. Dig up the planned planting site to the depth of a shovel. Add fertilizer. If the soil is acidic, add a lime composition. You can also lay polycarbonate in the spring. If the soil is peaty, you should put 2 kilograms of humus or compost, a small spoon of potassium sulfate, superphosphate and 2 large spoons of wood ash per square meter of the plot. Then the soil is thoroughly leveled and watered with a composition of mineral fertilizers.

Black soil for bush vegetables is prepared as follows: add 2 kg of sawdust, 2 tbsp. ash and 1 tbsp. superphosphate.



Loamy soils are diluted with humus or peat.
 

There is no specific time for planting vegetable crops. Experienced agricultural technicians do this by eye, and inexperienced ones are guided by the temperature outside. If the thermometer is at 15 degrees, you can safely start planting seeds. Usually this time comes at the beginning or middle of May.

Zucchini is very easy to plant under a hoe. Make a hole, put a few seeds and rake in the earth, lightly tamping it. It is advisable to leave a gap of 70 cm between rows, and 50 cm between bushes. Many gardeners use the old method. Just rake a hole and plant 4-5 seeds there at a distance of 30 cm.
 

Zucchini that were planted with the help of seedlings begin to yield a harvest earlier.



To harvest early, sowing for seedlings should be done already in April. If you need to get the fruits later, in order to seal them, it is better to plant them at the end of May. You can prepare the substrate yourself at home: take 5 parts of peat, 2 parts of turf soil and the same amount of humus, 1 part of sawdust. You need to add any fertilizer to this composition.

This can be:

It is best to sow the planting material in separate peat pots. This will allow you to easily transplant the seedlings into the soil.
Warm water is poured into the container (the soil in the pot should be half full). The seeds are planted a couple of cm deep.
The seed is laid out evenly, the sprouted shoot should “look” down.

The pots are covered with film from above. The room temperature should fluctuate within the normal range (18-22 degrees).
When the shoots appear, the temperature can be reduced by a couple of degrees. The coolness will slow down the growth of the shoots a little. Make sure that the lighting is bright. There should be no dry places in the place where the seed sprouts. Watering is carried out regularly.

After 2 weeks after germination, the plant can be fed. For 1 liter of water, 5 g of superphosphate, 2 g of urea, mullein 1:10 and a growth stimulator are used. After 30 days, the seedlings can be transplanted into open ground.

As soon as 4 leaves appear, the bushes will need to be hilled. This will give the plant and the root system strength. It is necessary to regularly remove weeds and loosen the soil, which will allow the plant to receive air and moisture.

Watering should be done regularly. In hot weather - every other day, in cool weather - 2 times a week. In any case, the water should be warm. It should be added under the root before flowering. Each bush takes up to 5 liters of water. During the flowering period, even more.

The plant should be fed during the budding and ovary period. At the initial stage, nitrogen fertilizers are added, and then replaced with potassium and phosphorus. As an alternative, mullein and bird droppings are allowed.