Features of caring for radishes in the open field

Care features

Radish is an unpretentious plant that does not require special personal care. Therefore, growing a radish in your own garden does not require much labor and physical costs from you. It will be necessary to water the individuals, thin out their thickets, loosen the soil and eliminate all weeds, and also fertilize the plants with special fertilizing.

Radish care also includes thinning. For the first time, it is carried out after the formation of a pair of leaves in young shoots. At the same time, a distance of 0.06–0.07 meters should be left between the root crops. The next time, thickening is warned after a month.

How does outdoor care work? When growing a root crop in unprotected soil, weeding between the rows is carried out three or four times per season. For the first time, they are loosened to a depth of 0.04 meters, the second time - by 0.08 meters, the subsequent ones - by 0.1–0.12 meters.

How to grow properly

How to grow a radish? Before carrying out the cultivation and care of the crop in the open field, it is necessary to prepare the soil in advance for this. In the spring, the soil is dug to the depth of the layer with humus. After that, fertilizing is carried out with mineral fertilizers, urea, superphosphate and potassium chloride.

The technology of sowing seeds of the summer variety provides for the procedure in early May, and the winter one - in June.

The seed is placed in holes 0.02 meters deep, maintaining a row spacing of 0.3–0.4 meters. If the ground is not sufficiently moistened, then after planting it is necessary to water the soil abundantly.

Watering

Watering the root crop is carried out regularly, but not more often than once a week. The winter variety is moistened only three or four times during the entire development cycle. A radish needs a lot of water: about a bucket per unit area. The main thing is the regularity of the procedure. After all, watering after a dry hot period will lead to cracking of root crops. When there is a lack of moisture, the root becomes woody, after which it cannot be eaten. The mulching procedure will help to keep the liquid in the ground and reduce the number of procedures.

Top dressing

How many times do you need to fertilize a radish and how to do it correctly? During the entire development cycle of the plant, fertilizing is carried out twice. For the first time - after the formation and disclosure of cotyledon leaves. The second time feeding is carried out 7 days after the first.

Due to the fact that the ripening period of early varieties is short, it is necessary to feed the crop only with nitrogen-containing fertilizers. For example, 0.2% sodium or calcium ammonium nitrate.

Late-ripening varieties are fertilized once a week with solutions of mineral fertilizers (0.06 kilograms of superphosphate, 0.02 kilograms of urea and 0.015 kilograms of calcium chloride). In this case, a bucket of water is consumed for 20 m of the row. The plant needs nitrogen in large doses, so complex fertilizers must be alternated with nitrogen fertilizers. All top dressing should stop three weeks before harvest.

Manure is not used as a top dressing for the radish, as it stimulates the "division" of the root crop.

Pests and diseases

Unfortunately, even if you properly care for the crop, it will not be possible to completely prevent its diseases. In particular, radish pests make themselves felt. Therefore, the detection of parasites and the fight against them is a necessary measure to obtain a high-quality root crop.

Often the plant is infected with keel, cabbage mosaic, felt disease, powdery mildew, peronosporosis, white rot, black leg and linen.

Keela is a fungal ailment that provokes the appearance of fusiform or spherical outgrowths on the roots. They gradually turn brown, and then begin to rot. Affected individuals slow down growth and may even die.

Due to infection with mosaics, the veins on the leaves of the vegetable are pulled together, and the organs themselves are deformed and change shape. Further, a dark green edging appears on the veins, and white dead areas are formed.

Felt disease has the appearance of brown or purple spots that appear on the fruit. After that, colonies of fungi appear in place of the spots. The most comfortable environment for the development of the disease is warm and high humidity.

Powdery mildew appears on the ground parts of the culture with a grayish bloom, which gradually turns brown. The affected leaves curl and dry out, the individual itself slows down growth or completely stops it.

Peronosporosis (downy mildew) looks like chlorine spots on the top of the leaf, which become oily and yellowish. Over time, they turn brown, and a purple bloom appears on the bottom of the organ.

The black leg is manifested by the thinning of the leaf rosette and the top of the fruit.

White rot provokes the removal of colored pigment from the affected parts of the plant, then the affected areas become covered with fungus and become like cotton wool.

Belle seems to cover the organs of culture with oil paint, after which the tissues become brown and dry. Leaves with fungal spores become swollen and deformed.

The most dangerous insects for the radish are cruciferous flea beetles, scoops (garden and cabbage), cabbage flies, moths and whites, wireworms and stem nematodes.

The cruciferous flea beetle is a beetle with hopping hind legs that feeds on the leaves of crops. The pest can easily feed on young plant shoots.

The caterpillar of the scoop or cabbage whitefly feeds on leafy pulp, and the larvae of the cabbage fly damage root crops, provoking their rotting.

The nematode larvae feed on the sap of crops, as a result of which they lose their usual shape.

Wireworms consume both the leaves and the fruits of the radish.

Treatment

Diseases of a fungal nature are usually defeated by treating cultures with solutions that contain copper. Usually it is copper sulfate, Bordeaux liquid, copper chloride. The technology of processing plants is described in detail in the instructions for the preparations.

It is not so easy to defeat the mosaic. There is no drug against it. Affected plants are simply removed and burned, preventing the spread of the disease to neighboring individuals.

Insects are usually eliminated with insecticides, which are readily available from specialized retail outlets.

However, prevention helps best of all - pre-sowing treatment of soil and seeds, as well as compliance with the rules for growing radish.

So, planting radish on your own site is worth it because of the wide range of its uses. Caring for the culture is uncomplicated. It is enough to cultivate the soil and carry out regular watering with additional fertilizing. It should be noted that a significant advantage of the plant is its ability to survive frost.

Video "Growing radish"

This video will tell you about root crop varieties, predecessors, sowing and crop care.