Not all garden owners buy new colorful bags for each season, because they know how to collect cucumber seeds at home. This process is not particularly difficult, but has its own nuances.
No matter how much you like the variety, you need to pay attention to whether it is a hybrid, which is indicated by the letters F1 or F2. Even when you manage to find seeds in such fruits, the cucumbers will not set, and if they grow, they will lose their quality. Excellent productivity and disease resistance are preserved in hybrids for only one season.
Which fruit to choose?
Breeders develop crop varieties by crossing the best plants.Stable characteristics are not obtained in one year. This kind of work takes a lot of time. You need to collect cucumber seeds from fruits that have 4 chambers, since they form female flowers on which the ovary is formed. Within a season, a delicious harvest will ripen from the seeds collected with your own hands.
To prepare them, you must not pick the largest fruits on the strongest bush. You can mark these cucumbers with a ribbon, put something under the base, otherwise, once on the ground, they will rot if it rains. So that the fruits do not interfere with the appearance of a new ovary, cucumbers should be left for seeds not at the beginning of the season, but at the end.
Hybrids that self-pollinate are usually planted under the film. Varietal plants can be grown in a closed greenhouse if bees fly into it, otherwise the fruits will not set.
When to collect seeds?
To ensure that the quality characteristics of the variety are preserved, the next year many fruits ripen on the bushes, pleasing with their bright green color and delicate taste; seed cucumbers are left on the vines until frost sets in. The grains must survive not only the summer heat, but also the autumn temperature fluctuations. After natural stratification, next year the sprouts will sprout together, a lot of ovary will form, on which cucumbers will set.
These green fruits contain enzymes, thanks to which animal fats are absorbed faster. They contain vitamins, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and calcium. Fiber normalizes intestinal function. Alkali salts neutralize acids and prevent the conversion of carbohydrates into fats.
Seeds are selected under a combination of three conditions:
- the fruit becomes brown;
- the cucumber becomes soft;
- the tail dries out.
From such grains you can get a harvest for the next year. They will retain their properties for several seasons.
How to collect cucumber seeds correctly?
In order for each grain to sprout in the spring, you need to know how to prepare them and pay special attention to this process. Whether the quality characteristics of the variety will be preserved depends on how the cucumber seeds were collected.
Having found a fruit with a square cross-section:
- Cut it into 2 equal halves.
- The grains are taken out from the front part.
- After cleaning the chamber, the seeds along with the pulp are placed in a plastic or glass glass, filling it one third full.
- If there is a lack of liquid, add water.
- The container is covered with gauze and sent to a warm place where fermentation should take place. Fermentation lasts from 24 hours to 3 days.
When the cucumber begins to rot, bacteria appear. To make them die, such a fruit is treated with a solution of copper sulfate.
After the grains are cleared of pulp and shell, they are filled with water. Seeds that will sprout will be at the bottom of the container, empty ones will float to the surface. The grains are subjected to this manipulation several times, after which they are washed again and transferred to the material. To help them dry better, you can put the cloth on the radiator or place it near another heating device.
Seeds are packaged in cloth bags or stored in paper bags at low temperatures in the dark for several years. In the first season, many male flowers will form on the bushes grown from these grains, but there will be few fruits.
If you don’t want to wait for the seeds to stand, you need to heat them in the oven for a couple of hours at 50 degrees. Cucumber seeds give the best inputs in the fourth year; they can be sown in the sixth, but not all of them will emerge from the soil.
It is imperative to take into account that if, after fermentation, the shells of the collected seeds do not separate and they are dried, the sprouts will not sprout.
How to get seedlings?
In the southern regions, crop seeds are sent directly to open ground. Summer residents grow cucumbers not in fields, but in small plots. In order for the root to take root better, place 1-2 grains in each glass and peat pot. Before disembarking:
- The bag of seeds is kept on a radiator or in the sun for 14 days.
- To improve germination, the grains are heated for two hours in a thermos.
- Place in a solution of potassium permanganate for 30 minutes.
- Rinse with running water.
After soaking, sprouts hatch on the third day. The seeds are placed on the surface of the earth and covered with a layer of 15 ml of soil. The soil is lightly sprayed, but not watered. Prepare seedlings in each pot in this way.
Containers with seed grains are placed in boxes, which are moved to a window, or sent to a greenhouse, covered with plastic film. At 25 degrees Celsius, you won’t have to wait more than 3 days for the first shoots. When they appear, the air temperature must be lowered so that the cucumbers do not begin to stretch. In cloudy weather, you need to turn on a fluorescent lamp so that the plant does not feel dark. Daylight for seedlings must be provided for at least 10 hours a day.
The film is removed with the emergence of shoots. When the first leaves form, water is poured into each pot. It is better to do this with a spoon, since excess moisture will only hinder young bushes.
Transfer
3 weeks after sowing, 2 leaves appear, and the cucumbers can be sent to the garden. Then the roots will not get sick and will take root well. Before this, the land is fertilized with rotted manure and disinfected with a solution of potassium permanganate and Fitosporin.
Seedlings develop at a temperature of 16 degrees; when it gets colder, growth stops, so they need to be moved into the ground when the air warms up well. In the first days, it is advisable to cover the bushes with pine or spruce branches from the sun's rays. If you collect cucumber seeds correctly and care for the plants, they will reward you with juicy and green fruits. Harvesting begins one and a half months after planting in the garden.
