If you live in an apartment, but your hands are drawn to grow useful and ecologically clean vegetables for your family, try to do it on the balcony. Planting cucumbers on the balcony is a painstaking process, but the result will please you.
Self-pollinated varieties of cucumbers for the balcony
You should start with the right choice of a variety of cucumbers . In the room you can not rely on the help of insects and you will have to pollinate the plants yourself. You can simplify your life with special varieties that do not require pollination.
Among the varieties that can be grown on the windowsill, it is worth noting the following:
- Altai early (ripening variety, fruits are universal, and the plant tolerates low temperatures well);
- Nezhin local (the only requirement - moisture, otherwise the variety is unpretentious and has a high yield);
- Elegant (yielding variety with delicious fruits).
There are special varieties that were taken out for cultivation on balconies. Among them, well-proven Turquoise, Stresa, Cucaracha, Moscow greenhouse.
Care for cucumbers on the balcony
Now consider the basic tips on how to grow cucumbers on the balcony. As a rule, amateur gardeners use wooden boxes or pots for seeding. This option is possible, but this container is too bulky. It is very convenient to use plastic dishes. Just pick up the dark and not letting the light.
- Before growing cucumbers on the balcony, you should properly prepare the soil mixture. The soil consists of two parts of fertile land and one part of peat with river sand. Two buckets of wood ash should be prepared on a bucket of this soil mixture. All this mixture is poured into plastic bottles and compacted a little.
- Seeds before planting cucumbers on the balcony, you need to prepare. They should be slightly warmed, processed with trace elements and dipped in a solution of potassium permanganate. Hold them there for 20 minutes and rinse under running water. After these procedures, the seeds are allowed to swell in water for 12 hours. Then wrapped in a damp cloth and periodically sprayed with water. The temperature should be at least 22 ° C. As soon as the seeds appear white sprouts, they can be planted.
- What to feed cucumbers on the balcony? You can start fertilizing two weeks after the appearance of the first shoots. As a first fertilizer for cucumbers on the balcony use a weak solution. In 10 liters of water dilute 15 g of potassium fertilizers and 5 g of ammonium nitrate, add 3 g of superphosphate and 5 g of magnesium sulfate. During watering, make sure that the solution does not get on the leaves. After 10 days another mixture is prepared: in 10 liters of an aqueous solution of Mullein in a ratio of 1:10 dilute 20 g of superphosphate and 15 g of potassium sulfate. Another option, than you can feed cucumbers on the balcony, is a green fertilizer.
- How to water cucumbers on the balcony? Water should only water at room temperature. Make sure that the soil is always moist, but not too humid. It is better to water every day a little.
- How to pinch the cucumbers on the balcony? The plant should be plucked after the appearance of the third leaf.
The sheet is cut with the growth point. Touch the kidney at the base of the second leaf is not worth it, as soon as lateral shoots start to grow from it. They form a whip of a cucumber bush. - How to tie a cucumber on a balcony? Start the garter after the appearance of the eighth leaf. Liane better tie to the wide ropes at an altitude of about 2 meters. It is enough to drill holes and attach the usual clotheslines to the screws.
- It is very important to care for cucumbers on the balcony in hot weather. Be sure to darken the plants from direct sun rays, to increase the humidity next to the "beds" put a bucket of water. The soil should be necessarily covered up , and the leaves should be periodically sprinkled with water.