Watermelon - cultivation in the Urals is possible

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

Watermelon is not only a great taste and aroma, but also a berry with many beneficial properties for the body. For example, it contains fructose, pectin substances that improve digestion, s alts of magnesium, calcium, iron, fiber and B vitamins. This gift of summer helps with anemia, edema, kidney stones, and is also used as a restorative agent after operations under anesthesia. Few people know that, in addition to the pulp, seeds are useful in watermelon. They, along with pumpkin, are an anthelmintic and contain a large amount of vitamin D. In rural areas, thick watermelon rinds are still tied to the head instead of pills for headaches and migraines.

Volgograd, Astrakhan regions, Kalmykia, Uzbekistan - these are the regions where watermelon grows. Growing this crop in the Urals is associated with certain difficulties, primarily due to climatic conditions. This berry is very thermophilic: forit needs at least 17°C for germination, and for optimal growth - more than 25°C during the day and from 18°C at night. Watermelons, which are often difficult to grow in the Urals due to high air humidity, require sufficiently dry air (60-70%). Excessive "water" leads to fungal diseases, death of the plant or a significant deterioration in the quality of the fruit.

What do you need to do to get a delicious watermelon in your garden? Growing in the Urals and in central Russia involves a very careful approach to the choice of seed. Experts recommend varieties "Sugar Baby", "Skorik" or "Spark", which ripen in 60-70 days, which just correspond to the warm season. The F1 group (Crimstar, Moscow Region Charleston, etc.) is also suitable. But these plants do not produce good seeds for the next year. When choosing a variety, you need to look at the number of days from fruit set to readiness. It depends on this whether the watermelon ripens, the cultivation of which in the Urals is limited to warm days of a short summer. You can also pay attention to the shape of the fruit, large-fruited, transportability, if you are going to grow products for sale. Bags with seeds should be taken only in special stores, because. in the markets they can be frozen due to incorrect storage.

So, we want to get watermelons in the Urals. Growing a culture begins with washing the seed in a slightly pink potassium permanganate solution. This achieves disinfection and rejection of emerging specimens. This is followed by heating the seeds at the battery(temperature should not exceed 50 ° C), which should be started about a week before the intended sowing. The sowing itself is usually done in the middle or end of April.

Seeds can be planted in milk bags to a depth of about 3 cm, after spilling the ground with a hot solution of potassium permanganate. The package is closed with polyethylene and placed on the sunny side of the window. The optimum temperature for seedlings is about 27 ° C, at which the seedlings will be ready in a month (has 3-5 leaves).

If you do not want the weather to ruin your watermelon, the cultivation of this plant in the Urals should be started under a film, planting seedlings in the 15-20th of May. The distance between the sprouts should be about half a meter, about a kilogram of compost is brought into each hole and a spill of warm water is made. The seedling ball should rise slightly above the ridge (a couple of centimeters) so that the plant does not rot. The film is removed from the ridges in mid-late June, when the watermelon blooms. After the formation of 2-3 fruits, the remaining ovaries are cut off, excess branches are removed so that the remaining watermelons receive more light. The maturity of the fruit is determined not by size, but by the appearance of a clear pattern, a decrease in wax coating, and a dull sound when tapped. The ability to distinguish a ripe fruit from an unripe one comes only with experience. And experience makes it possible to grow some exotic varieties, like watermelon with yellow flesh or a square shape.