How to grow eggplant seedlings at home

Seed selection

Eggplants, which will be planted under the roof of a greenhouse or outdoors, must be grown from proven, quality seeds to avoid most diseases and growth problems. Therefore, for a future rich harvest, it is important to properly process the seeds before planting.

First of all, check the germination of the eggplant seeds. This is easy to do: take 10-12 seeds, soak them in warm water for 24 hours, and after they swell, wrap them in a damp cloth for another 6-7 days. During the test, the fabric should be constantly moistened and the temperature maintained. At the end of the procedure, count how many seeds have sprouted, if more than half, you can safely take them into circulation, if less, then choose another variety or another manufacturer.

In addition to germination, when choosing an eggplant variety, you should learn about a few more parameters of an adult vegetable. Of course, first of all, evaluate the ripening period of the eggplant. If all types of eggplant are suitable for greenhouses, then you should not choose late-ripening varieties for an open-air site, since they are most likely not to live up to this date or will suffer from infections and insects.

The next item is yield. Remember that the most productive varieties require more care and attention, both at the stage of growing seedlings and during growth in the garden. For a good harvest of some varieties, a certain soil composition will be required, and if it is not on your site, then it is better to choose a less productive, but at the same time suitable for the given conditions variety.

Consider the firmness of the plant as well. If the selected variety is very vulnerable to soil diseases, fungal flora, picky about the surrounding conditions, then think twice before planting it - it will take a lot of effort to grow it.

Last but not least, evaluate the keeping quality of the variety. It depends on how long vegetables can lie without processing, which means how much time from harvest to cooking you will have in stock. Often, this characteristic also affects the taste of the fruit, some acquire a bitter taste during long-term storage.

Video "Planting eggplant".

This video describes in detail the process of planting eggplant seedlings at home.

Priming

Being extremely picky about the soil composition of plants, eggplants require almost pharmaceutical precision in soil preparation. Three “whales” on which this balance is kept: fertility, looseness, neutral acidity. Why exactly this composition? Eggplants are very fond of moisture, but at the same time stagnant water in the soil leads to rotting of the root system. Therefore, it is very important that the plant can easily absorb the required amount of liquid, and the remainder goes into the soil. The fertility of the soil hardly raises questions - in order to get a rich harvest, it is necessary to well nourish the plants already at the stage of growing seedlings. Neutral acidity promotes better absorption of trace elements from the soil and applied fertilizers.

Making the right potting mix at home is easy. You will need the following components: humus, peat, baking powder, leaf earth. Of course, you can get potting mix at the store, but it's much safer to prepare it yourself.

Mix 1 part turf, 1 part peat and 1 part river sand, stir well until the ingredients form a single mass. Add to the mixture a solution of 20 g of superphosphate, 15 g of potassium sulfate, 10 g of urea, diluted in 10 liters. After the soil mixture dries up, you can use it to plant seeds.

The second recipe for potting soil: Mix equal parts of humus, peat and turf. Stir in 10-12 g of superphosphate and 0.5 l of wood ash. Stir the mixture thoroughly and it is ready to use.

Any soil must be disinfected in order to protect eggplant seeds from diseases in the early stages of development. There are several methods of soil cultivation: calcining in the oven, freezing in the freezer, steaming, dripping with a solution of potassium permanganate.

Sowing

Before sowing seeds in the prepared soil mixture, they must be disinfected. Often, producers perform this procedure before packing the seeds, but sometimes it is better to play it safe than to pay with the harvest. Place the selected seeds in a rich pink potassium permanganate solution for half an hour. If you do not have potassium permanganate, then heat the water to 50 ° C, put the seeds in cheesecloth, making a bag out of it, put them in water for half an hour. After processing, place them in cold water for 2-3 minutes.

The timing of planting eggplant for seedlings depends on the variety, but most often this happens from mid-February to mid-March. Fill the planting containers with prepared soil, dampen it moderately with warm water. Deepen each seed 1-1.5 cm. It is recommended to plant the eggplants in separate cells so that they do not get tangled by the roots and do not interfere with the growth of each other. Cover containers with plastic wrap to create a stable temperature and maintain humidity. For stable growth of eggplant seedlings, an air temperature of up to + 27 ° C is required.

When the seeds germinate, they can be grown like any seedling at home - providing abundant access of light (for example, using fluorescent lamps), regular watering, maintaining a stable temperature. A few weeks before transplanting into the ground in the beds, the seedlings must be hardened - gradually lower the air temperature to 14-18 ° C. This will make it easier to grow plants on the ground, since their immunity will be higher.

Seedling care

Growing seedlings at home is easy, not much more difficult and caring for them. Knowing about the weak and strong points in the process of eggplant growth, you can speed up the cultivation of seedlings for several weeks, having vegetables ready for a calm transplant.

First of all, you should make sure that the air temperature is stable both during the day and at night. It is not recommended to grow seedlings on open balconies or on glazed balconies without insulation. Low temperature significantly slows down the germination and development of seedlings, moreover, makes them weak and painful. During the first or second week, the air temperature should not fall below + 20 ° С in the daytime and below 16-18 ° С at night. This will create a comfortable, safe environment for germinating seeds, helping them to get stronger. From the third week, you can slightly increase the difference between day and night temperatures to simulate the conditions that await the vegetable in the garden. In this way, you harden the plant, ensuring greater resistance to temperature extremes.

It is important to monitor watering. Train yourself to water the plants with water, the temperature of which is not lower than the temperature of the air (and in the beds - not lower than the temperature of the earth). There are two watering options: spray from a spray bottle or pour water directly into the container.Spraying has a number of advantages - the soil is not washed out, roots or seeds are not exposed. However, there are disadvantages: the higher the air temperature and the more active the sun, the more likely it is to burn the eggplant leaves, on which drops of water remain. Therefore, try to spray the liquid without touching the leaves and stems. When watering directly into a container, distribute the liquid around the perimeter of the container without pouring directly under the stem. Maintain a moderate soil moisture - eggplants are equally disliked by drought and high moisture.

Growing seedlings at home requires careful work with lighting. In February-March, natural light will not be enough for seedlings, since daylight hours are still quite short. Lack of light negatively affects the growth of eggplant, leading to wilting of leaves, slowing down of vegetative processes, as well as greater vulnerability to various kinds of diseases. You will have to provide a sufficient amount of light with your own hands - using fluorescent lamps or specialized phytolamps. Additional lighting will be needed for 9 to 12 hours every day. The lamps should be installed at a distance of 50-60 cm above the plant.

If you wish, you can pick the plants after two or three leaves have formed on them. This option is suitable for those cases when you grew seedlings in a common container and now want to plant in separate ones. New containers should have drainage holes to keep moisture from stagnating. Fill them with the same soil that you used for the first planting, pour the infusion of wood ash. The preparation of the new container is now complete. Moisten the soil a few hours before transplanting to make it easier to remove the seedlings. Place the seedlings in new containers, sprinkle the top with earth over the cotyledon leaves.

Even taking into account the fact that fertilizers are added to the soil mixture, they will not be enough for the normal development of eggplant seedlings. Therefore, the seedlings will have to be fed several times in order to achieve stable growth.

The first feeding is carried out on 10-11 days, if you did not pick and on 11-13, if you did. Use any fertilizer that is high in phosphorus to stimulate the development and strengthening of the eggplant root system.

If the seedlings develop normally, then you can no longer feed them until they are transplanted into the ground in the beds. In the case when plants develop slowly or you want to further strengthen them, use fertilizers with a high content of phosphorus and potassium to build up green mass. Also, every one and a half to two weeks, you can water them with an infusion of ash (0.5 liters of ash is infused in 10 liters of water for 2-3 days) or a yeast solution (10 g of dry yeast is diluted in 10 liters of warm water, insisted for 2-3 days , dilute 1:10 before watering). This will provide the plants with all the nutrients they need to support healthy growth.

The growth period of eggplant seedlings varies from variety to variety, but on average, it takes 60-75 days to fully develop a seedling suitable for transplantation.

Video “The Secret of the Eggplant Harvest”.

All the tricks for growing eggplant are described in the video.