What temperature can tomato seedlings withstand in a greenhouse, in the open field, on a balcony, under covering material, in a greenhouse?

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Tomatoes are a very popular crop for cultivation by owners of summer cottages. Hard-working gardeners get large crops of the most useful vegetable in almost any climatic zone. The first question for beginner tomato growers is the optimal and permissible temperatures. The question of what temperature tomato seedlings can withstand sounds in different variations, because you need to know the temperature conditions for germinating seeds, planting seedlings, and ripening fruits in different conditions. Answers are needed to choose the most convenient way for you to get a good harvest.

Homeland and history of the resettlement of tomatoes

At home, in the tropics of South America, wild types of tomatoes still grow.

Knowing this, one can definitelyanswer one of the questions, namely, what sub-zero temperature can withstand tomato seedlings. None. Frost in the air and especially on the soil, the plant does not withstand and dies. It came to Europe with the light hand of Columbus. This is the case when the exact date is known - one thousand four hundred and ninety-three. It began to be cultivated for culinary purposes only by the middle of the sixteenth century in warm European countries. And already with the light hand of the Italians, "golden apples", as the fruits of the plant were called here, became "pomo doro" - a literal translation. Hence the Russian - "tomato". During the reign of Catherine II, scientists under the guidance of breeder E. Grachev and the founder of Russian agronomy A. Bolotov persistently began to look for the answer to the question of what temperature drop tomato seedlings can withstand. With their light hand, a juicy vegetable appeared on the tables of people across the country.

Botanical description

Tomatoes are a nightshade herbaceous plant. At home, it can be perennial. In countries with a more severe climate - annual. The root system is a rod with many lateral branches, it is covered with many hairs. In open warm ground, in the southern regions, the roots reach a meter length. In greenhouses, up to thirty centimeters develop. Roots are easily formed on any part of the stem. The stems themselves are erect or require garters, and by the nature of growth: constantly branching - indeterminate and, conversely, determinant. The leaves are of the usual form, but their color changes under the influence of external conditions and the state of the plant. Flowers of both sexescollected in inflorescences "fruit brush". The fruits are fleshy and juicy berries of various sizes and shapes. The color of ripe fruits - from golden to brown and purple, depending on the variety.

Tomatoes are self-pollinating plants. It begins to bloom approximately on the fiftieth day after germination from seeds, and the fruits ripen another sixty days later. During this period, any sudden external changes, especially temperature fluctuations, can be detrimental to the crop. And here it would be necessary to know what the lowest temperature the tomato seedlings can withstand, and to prevent the plant from getting into extreme temperatures - below five degrees. It will die in the heat above forty-three degrees.

Choosing a variety of tomatoes

In the matter of choosing a variety at the initial stages, you can use the recommendations of experienced gardeners, but your personal experience is more valuable. In any case, you need to buy seeds of several types of tomatoes. Carry out the work from germinating them into seedlings to harvesting. Autumn work will show which variety of tomatoes met the expectations specifically in your garden. When choosing tomato seeds for an open area without greenhouses, the first obligatory question should be the following: what temperature can a tomato seedling planted in open ground withstand? Here it is necessary to give preference to low-growing hybrid varieties with a well-developed, temperature-resistant root system. And so that the idea of \u200b\u200bwhat minimum temperature the seedlings of tomatoes can withstand, take into service the following condition. Varietiesit is better to choose early, early or medium early. Vegetation in these groups takes up to seventy, up to ninety and up to one hundred days, respectively. An example of determinant varieties: Oak, very tasty and high-yielding White filling, early and with fruits of the same size Agate, resistant to temperature troubles and with a special tomato flavor Sanka, pink sweet Demidov, ideal for conservation Lady's fingers. The question of what temperature the tomato seedlings can withstand in a greenhouse, if it is built on your site, will be no less important when choosing a variety for a greenhouse. Here you can give preference to indeterminate hybrids. The main stem of different types of tomato tree can grow for more than a year. The height of the Sprut 1 variety, for example, is almost four meters, and the crown covers an area of more than fifty square meters. Harvest per year up to one and a half tons. This is the best variety for greenhouses covered not just with film, but with modern transparent plastic materials for business farmers.

Major variety is also suitable for industrial scale. Even in the cold season, gardeners who have chosen this variety will not worry about what night temperatures the tomato seedlings can withstand. It is highly resistant to sudden temperature changes and major tomato diseases. In addition, long-term transportation does not harm their presentation. In terms of taste, many consider pink Mikado to be the best greenhouse and fast-ripening variety. The high sugar content makes the fruit pulp sweet andjuicy. If you are a big fan of your own grown tomatoes, and the place for growing is limited to an apartment in a city high-rise building, then it's time to find out what temperature the tomato seedlings can withstand on the balcony. In this situation, it is better to choose varieties with small fruits and undersized bushes such as Cherry, Cascade Red, Red Pearl. All of them are lovers of the morning or evening sun and will withstand a night drop in temperature to twelve degrees.

Lighting and watering requirements

Good lighting for photophilous plants is a necessary condition. For tomato seedlings, the lack of light is especially dangerous. Seedlings develop poorly, their stems stretch and weaken. Adult tomatoes with a lack of light almost do not bloom, the ovaries fall off. The plant turns into green tops. Tomatoes of southern varieties and those grown in greenhouses and greenhouses are especially acutely affected by the lack of sun. Lack of light is the reason for the poor taste of tomatoes. Solanaceae grown without sun can be poisonous. In greenhouses, without natural light, plants are more likely to get sick than those grown outdoors. In this case, you need to take into account that there are different irrigation regimes for the soil and the greenhouse.

To rid greenhouse plants of leaf mold, you need to reduce watering. In open areas, the plant should be regularly watered, especially during the period when the fruits are formed and ripen. The soil under the roots should not dry out and turn into a crust. Watering it is usually alternated with loosening. You need to pour water under the root, without falling on the leaves, plants are badendure. Before use, it is better to defend the water for a day. It should not be cold - this is the question of what temperature tomato seedlings can withstand in open ground. Required humidity for soil -70%, for air - 60%. Increased moisture and lack of heat reduce yields.

Requirements for soil and neighbors

The requirements for soil are not as strict as those for light and heat. It's great if you can boast of highly fertile black soil in the garden or in the greenhouse. Light loamy and sandy loamy soil of medium acidity is well suited. Lime must be added to very acidic soil. Tomatoes are not recommended to be planted for more than two years in a row in the same place. It is bad for the crop of tomatoes if peppers, eggplants or other vegetables grew in the area before them, taking a lot of nutrients from the soil. Onions, potatoes, cabbage, zucchini, cucumbers, pumpkins and carrots are considered good predecessors. Nightshade vegetables, potatoes and peppers are not suitable as neighbors in the beds, their root secretions inhibit the growth of tomatoes. In addition, they have the same diseases and pests, which increases the risk of damage. It is good to plant onions, asparagus, parsley, calendula next to tomatoes.

These neighbors have a beneficial effect and protect against the above misfortunes.

Preparing seeds for seedlings

Growing tomato seedlings begin with seed preparation. The first step is to test them. High-quality seeds are full-weight, they sink in a five percent saline solution. Everything that pops upempty or rotten seeds. The selected samples are washed well with running cold water and immersed for fifteen minutes in a one percent solution of potassium permanganate. After disinfection, they are washed again with cold water and soaked in a solution of special microelements for the whole night. It is better to buy a ready-made composition for preparing a solution. Soaked seeds for spitting are laid out on a damp cloth. During this period, possibly up to a week, the fabric should always be damp. Excess moisture, like drying out, negatively affects germination.

Growing seedlings

It is more profitable to prepare the soil for the germination of hatched seeds on your own. It should be loose and light, well-permeable to air and moisture. You can mix equally sorted soddy soil, sand, humus and peat. It is important that plants of the nightshade family have not previously grown on the soil used. Instead of sand, you can mix sawdust with ash, that is, they take components that can be obtained. For watering the substrate, a mineral solution is prepared from about twenty grams of superphosphate and ten grams of urea per bucket of water. For planting seeds, long, preferably wooden boxes are used, where they are laid out with tweezers a couple of centimeters apart, into an even long groove in the prepared ground one and a half centimeters deep. Sprinkle with earth on top and cover with a film. The boxes are placed in a warm place.

Here the question is relevant about what temperature the tomato seedlings can withstand undercovering material. The boundary temperature for seed germination is ten degrees Celsius; to speed up the process, you need at least sixteen degrees. Further, until a few leaves appear, during the day the temperature should be from twenty to twenty-four degrees, on cloudy days up to sixteen degrees is allowed. At night - from fifteen to seventeen degrees with a plus sign, otherwise growth stops. When the seeds germinate, they are transferred to a lighted place. If there is not enough natural, artificial lighting is used. It is important to monitor the temperature of the air and soil, if everything is fine, the film is removed during the day. The room where the seedlings are being prepared must be ventilated, but there should not be a draft. When the first two leaves appear on the sprouts, they are planted, more familiar to gardeners - dive, into small paper or plastic cups with drainage holes at the bottom. Seedlings are selected he althy, with strong roots.

To stimulate the growth of lateral roots, the tap root is pruned. They dive into prepared soil, water and keep warm up to twenty degrees. When there are more than four leaves, ten days before planting in permanent soil, the day and night temperatures are reduced by a couple of degrees. You can put the pots outside, and in greenhouses and greenhouses, remove the upper windows to harden the plants, provided that there are no frosts at night. That is, you always need to remember what minimum temperature the seedlings of tomatoes can withstand, and make sure that it is not below twelve degrees. After hardening, he althy seedlings are to be planted, with a clean, even stem thickened at the base. When growing, in addition to light and heat, seedlings require top dressing. The first must be done ten days after transplanting into pots. It is good to prepare organic top dressing. To do this, slurry is dissolved in water in a ratio of one to four or chicken manure in a ratio of one to fifteen. Twenty grams of superphosphate and a little wood ash are also added here. It is necessary to maintain the same intervals between top dressings of about two weeks.

Seed sowing time

From when it is planned to transfer tomato seedlings to the ground, to a permanent place in a greenhouse or balcony, choose the time for planting seeds. And it depends on the climate of the area and the selected variety. Seedlings of ordinary low-growing varieties can be grown in fifty to seventy days, and for tomato giants, the time increases to ninety days. On open ground in mid-latitudes, for example, seedlings are taken out at the very beginning of summer. For closed ground, the dates may be shifted, adjusted for the question of what temperature the tomato seedlings can withstand in a greenhouse. It is necessary to take into account what type it is, what kind of coating - film or polycarbonate. For balcony seedlings, you need to consider where the windows of the balcony go, whether it is open or glazed, what kind of insulation you used.

If the balcony is located on the southeast side, it is insulated and there are plastic windows, then the landing dates are similar to the greenhouse terms, and the answer tothe question is, what temperature can tomato seedlings withstand in a greenhouse.

Requirements for greenhouse conditions

We will immediately specify the time of disembarkation, and hence the time when the greenhouse should be ready. If you call a greenhouse covered with a film without heating, then seedlings can be transferred to it only in mid-May, completely eliminating possible night frosts in your area. If the climate allows, and the unheated greenhouse is covered with a film in several layers, and you use additional paper covers and watering with warm water, then you can plant seedlings in the last days of April. In film greenhouses, where there is heating, seedlings are planted from the tenth to the fifteenth of April. An absolutely rhetorical question, what temperature can tomato seedlings withstand in a polycarbonate greenhouse, because they are usually built for year-round growing vegetables.

Now about the size of the land under the greenhouse. Seedlings of undersized varieties are planted at a distance of thirty centimeters from each other. For tall ones, at least forty centimeters of the plot are needed. The distance between rows, according to the planting technology, should be from fifty to sixty centimeters. It is better to plant bushes in a checkerboard pattern - two rows, row spacing, etc. On a plot of about one and a half to two square meters, eight to twelve tomato bushes can be placed. For a business greenhouse made of polycarbonate, five to six acres of land are needed. In any greenhouse you will need additional lighting - a real lamp or a mirror surface reflecting the sun's rays. Craftsmen use even ordinary household foil onplywood. There must be a source of water in the greenhouse or on the site, it is more profitable - a well or a well. Remembering what temperature tomato seedlings can withstand, and that it cannot be watered with cold water, you need to stock up on containers where the water settles and warms up in the sun or with a special device. And if growing tomatoes in a greenhouse is not just another experiment in a series of failed ones for you, then it is better to take care of an additional source of heat other than the sun.

The owners of greenhouses and greenhouses before each new planting will definitely have to process all parts, walls and coatings of the structure with bleach, spray it on the soil. The upper, five-centimeter layer of soil in greenhouses is changed to a new substrate, dug up and watered with a solution of potassium permanganate after each harvest. All these measures will help prevent frequent greenhouse diseases of vegetables. In general, greenhouse steam beds are arranged like a trench, where hot manure is first laid, about thirty to thirty-five centimeters, and then prepared, as for seedlings, a nutrient mixture up to fifteen centimeters up. Still do not forget about the mandatory and regular ventilation of greenhouses. Greenhouse designs should contain vents not only on the sides, but also at the top.

Tomatoes from the garden

If your goal is not a tomato business project, but a ripe, sweet, juicy tomato for dinner from your own garden near the house, then finally decide on the question of what temperature the tomato seedlings can withstand in the open field, and start. Choose a plot in the garden for beds, where there is a lot of light, which means it will be warm. ATLast year, by the way, cucumbers grew well here. In the fall, you, as expected, dug up the site and applied fertilizer. After winter and before planting again, everything was well loosened and nitrogenous fertilizers were added. At the end of May, a constant temperature was established. During the day from twenty-two to twenty-five degrees. It's warm at night, never below fifteen plus. You can plant. Water from a well in a large barrel in the garden warms up during the day in the sun above twenty degrees. There is something to water. And there is no “struggle” for the harvest, just if you work with desire, kindness and love for nature, everything will definitely work out.