October came into its own. Autumn bloomed the leaves with gold and purple, leaving only a few of them the same green color, adding yellow colors to it. In the gardens, asters, chrysanthemums, dahlias ...
Gardeners, admiring the beauties of autumn, do not forget about the pressing issues of October - to put in the bins not yet completely harvested root crops, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples and plums, as well as to sow and plant some crops of the future harvest.
From late September to mid-October, you can plant onions and garlic before winter, and until the first decade of November, sow such labor-intensive and slow-growing crops as carrots, parsley, dill, celery, beets. You can also sow radishes, lettuce, Chinese cabbage.
When determining the timing of sowing and planting, it is important to be guided by the rule - the seeds should not germinate, and the bulbs should take root, but not start growing in the fall. Planted onions and garlic take about 2-3 weeks to root without persistent frost. Sowing seeds is best done at a soil temperature of + 1-2 ° C.
Soil preparation
The soil must be prepared 2-3 weeks before sowing and planting. The precursors for onions and garlic can be cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, legumes, table roots. After freeing from plant residues of the previous culture, 3-4 kg of humus or compost, 20-30 g of nitrophoska or other complex fertilizer and a glass of wood ash are evenly applied per 1 m2. Fertilizers are buried by digging to a depth of 20 cm (on a shovel bayonet), the soil is leveled, and a bed of a convenient length and width is formed. The soil must settle and compact before planting.
Fresh manure for onions and garlic should not be brought in even during autumn planting, otherwise the bulb will give a lot of feathers, but it will be small itself, the plants will be more susceptible to diseases, you will collect a little and worse quality onions. Also, fresh manure is not added under the carrots - the tops grow powerful, and the roots are small or very large, branched, poorly stored.
The choice of planting material
Not all varieties of onions are suitable for winter planting. It is best to use hot onions that are regionalized for each specific area. It is fine if you plant local varieties. Of the domestic varieties, the best are Bessonovsky local, Myachkovsky, Strigunovsky local, and from foreign ones - Stuttgarter Riesen.
For planting, you can use onion sets, onions and oats. The difference lies in the size of the bulbs.
Depending on the diameter, onion sets are divided into categories:
- the first category (1.0-1.5 cm);
- the second category (1.5-3.0 cm);
- onions (more than 3 cm);
- non-standard (oatmeal) (less than 1.0 cm)
It is best to plant wild oats before winter, since it simply will not last until the spring planting, it will dry out, as well as a set of the first category - they make the best onions. Sevoks with a diameter of more than 1.5 cm and samples can be planted if the goal is to obtain a green feather, and not a turnip onion. In addition, bulbs more than 1.5 cm in diameter shoot more strongly, which is also not desirable when growing onions for a turnip.
Garlic can be planted with bulbs (mini-onions with a diameter of at least 0.4 cm), individual cloves with a diameter of at least 1 cm, as well as a single-tipped bulb (apple) with a diameter of 2.5 cm or more. It is best to use chives and apples, as the bulbs often do not sprout.
Planting material for onions and garlic must be sized before planting to facilitate planting.
The seeds of the above listed vegetable crops must be viable, dry, they do not need to be stimulated for germination with any treatments.
Sowing-planting
Planting can be carried out in grooves or on a flat surface to a certain depth. It is good to pour a layer of sand 1-2 cm thick at the bottom of the grooves - this will protect the bottoms of the bulbs from decay.The planting depth is calculated based on the diameter of the planting material.
As a general rule, the planting depth should correspond to two diameters of the seed or bulb.
Onion sets planted to a depth of 4-6 cm, wild oat to a depth of 2 cm. The neck of the bulb is not cut off so as not to provoke decay. The neck should be 1.5-2 cm below the soil level. The distance between the rows is 15-20 cm, between the bulbs in a row is 8-10 cm. Nesting of 3-4 bulbs in a "nest" is also possible, the distance between the bulbs is 2- 3 cm.
Garlic the bulbs are planted to a depth of 2-3 cm with a distance between the lines of 15-20 cm, between the bulbs in a row of 2-3 cm. 6-10 cm - for non-shooting. The distance between the lines for both is the same, 10-15 cm.
After planting, the seedlings are covered with earth, the soil is slightly compacted and mulching is carried out with peat or compost with a layer of 1.5-2 cm.It is not necessary to water. If weather conditions are favorable, rooting takes place within 2 weeks. Well-rooted seedlings are not afraid of soil freezing.
If the frosts are early, and the snow has not yet fallen by that time, the sevok may not take root and disappear. To prevent this from happening, you can additionally cover the plantings with small shavings (not sawdust), dry fallen leaves.
Winter crops of root crops (carrots, beets, radishes, celery) and green crops (dill, parsley, lettuce, Chinese cabbage) are carried out in the second half of October-early November to a depth of 2-3 cm with the obligatory mulching of crops with a layer of 3-4 cm. light moistening to eliminate voids between seeds and soil. The distance between the rows for green crops and radishes is 8-10 cm, for beets, carrots and celery - 15-20 cm.
In early spring, even in the snow, the beds are covered with plastic wrap, black non-woven material, you can dust it with ash. As soon as the snow melts, urea is added at the rate of 15-20 g per 1 m2. In the future, agrotechnical care adopted for each culture is carried out.
What does the winter sowing of vegetables give?
Every gardener knows how valuable free time in the spring is, how it is always lacking. Podzimny planting and sowing will help save it for other, no less important, spring work.
There is no need to store onion sets and garlic from autumn to spring, as well as buy them in winter or early spring and, again, store at high temperatures, incurring losses from drying out planting material. And with an autumn planting from a low-value planting material, you can get high quality marketable products.
When planted before winter, onions can to some extent be protected from a dangerous pest - onion flies. Early ripening will help to harvest before the massive development of the disease - downy mildew (peronosporosis).
You can harvest carrots, beets, celery 1-3 weeks earlier, and the vacated beds can be reused for rapidly maturing crops.
Already in mid-May, you can have vitamin greens of lettuce, parsley to the table, and collect onion feathers in April directly from under the snow.
Programming for next year's harvest begins today. Experiment this year, let it be just a couple of beds, and you will see how much easier it will be for you in the spring, what benefits and joy the autumn labor will bring next year.
I wish you a rich harvest and good mood!
