Feeding cucumbers with bread infusion is one of the most economical ways to increase productivity without the use of chemicals. To prepare such grain fertilizer, you do not need to purchase anything additional - it is enough to not throw away grain remains in the trash during one cold season, but dry them and put them away for storage.
What is the principle of grain feeding
Feeding cucumbers with bread “works” best on soil that has already been fertilized with organic matter, and here’s why: when bread crusts are soaked in water, the carbohydrate component of the flour product fades into the background, and the leading position is taken by the living microflora present in any yeast derivative. During the fermentation of bread, the bacteria in the fertilizing multiply at high speed and at the time the starter is introduced into the soil, a small volume of nutritious bread mash already contains a huge voracious colony of microorganisms.
Having mixed with the soil, all this endlessly consuming and rapidly growing fungal environment of the sourdough begins to intensively process the organic particles present in the soil left over from past fertilizers - manure, grass chaff or sunflower husks. At the same time, bacteria not only enrich the soil with decay products, they also synthesize substances that are a unique stimulator of growth and development of the root system.
By increasing the circulation of nutrients to the roots of cucumber seedlings, the vegetative period of cucumbers begins faster, and harvesting moves several days earlier. Grain fertilizer promotes the formation of full-fledged fruit flowers, which produce cucumber ovaries with dense pulp.
Thanks to the starter culture for feeding cucumbers, it is possible to “revive” and bring up even weak, non-viable seedlings to the general level.
Preparing sourdough
To prepare bread dressing for cucumbers, you will need pieces of dried bread, slightly crushed in your hands. Traditionally, black and bran crackers are used for sourdough, but the presence of white slices of bread will not spoil the fertilizing.Also, you should not throw away spoiled crusts of bread with traces of mold - all this will go into an empty tin container (for example, a 10-liter bucket), filling it with a little more than half of the bread mass.
The top of the bread is poured with slightly warm tap water, all the leaven is thoroughly stirred and pressed down under pressure. The bucket with crusts should be taken away from living quarters, since during the fermentation process, the starter will begin to emit a pungent aroma, which most people do not like. Ideally, it would be to install a container with bread in a greenhouse or barn.
After three days, you can come and look at the bread infusion - an indicator of its readiness will be a strong foam raised over the leaven, which is the main sign of activation of fungal bacteria. If there is no foam, you can wait another 2-3 days or move the bucket with the soaked bread to a warmer place where the bread starter will ferment faster.
Grain fertilizer prepared according to the following recipe can be applied to the soil every 15 days, starting from the day the first flowers open until the cucumbers are fully harvested. For the infusion, you will need a hundred-liter iron barrel, at the bottom of which is poured at least 4 kilograms of cut weeds (necessarily fresh), then the cavity is replenished with 1-1.5 kilograms of black bread crusts, a half-kilogram briquette of fresh yeast, ground in hands to coarse crumbs and 300 g ash. The whole mass is mixed well and filled with water to ¾ of the container volume. Now leaven for watering cucumbers must be infused in a closed barrel for at least 6 days and used according to the standard scheme, diluted with water in a fivefold volume.
Fertilizing cucumbers with black bread and iodine is an old proven method for greenhouse seedlings. The starter preparation must be purchased in the smallest 30 ml bottle, otherwise there is a risk of burning delicate plants and ruining all efforts. So, all you need is:
- bottle of iodine;
- 1.5 buckets of water;
- a loaf of black bread, cut into pieces and aged for about a week.
You need to soak all the bread overnight, and in the morning stir it vigorously with iodine until a homogeneous slurry forms. This strained iodine solution is used not only for root feeding, but also for disinfecting cucumber leaves as a preventive measure against insects. In this case, it is better to try the irrigation option. The bread infusion should be stored poured into dark bottles in a cool place. There is one more secret using iodine - you can simply pour it into small bowls and place it in the corners of the greenhouse - the air will instantly be saturated with volatile vapors of the medicine and harmful microorganisms living in the greenhouse frames, this will scare it away for a long time.
Before use, any bread starter must be filtered and diluted with warm water, adding it to the top of the bucket with the fermented liquid. Then fill a watering can with the dispersing tip removed with the starter, and carefully bringing the “nose” of the watering can to the very root of the cucumber seedlings, water each seedling with at least half a liter of grain liquid.
You need to be careful not to overdo it with bread starter, because this fertilizer for cucumbers changes the acidity of the soil, increasing it by several percent.
How to feed cucumbers with bread
You need to feed cucumbers at least four times a season, distributing the procedures according to the stages of plant development.
- The first feeding of cucumbers with infusion should be done even before transplanting the seedlings into the ground, at the stage of releasing the fifth true leaf of a small seedling;
- The 2nd feeding of cucumbers is necessary after planting in a permanent place, during the formation of fruit inflorescences;
- The 3rd and 4th feeding of cucumbers with bread infusion is done during fruiting.
If cucumbers are grown in greenhouse conditions, then the soil must be fertilized with any organic fertilizer before replanting the plants. The soil should be well-fed and rested, then the first direct feeding of cucumbers in the greenhouse with bread will not harm the plants and will not greatly affect the acid level of the soil.
It is advisable to carry out preliminary organic fertilization of the soil using bird droppings diluted in water at the rate of 1 part organic matter to 15 parts water. You can water the soil generously with this mixture, and after a few days thoroughly loosen it.
If in this case you want to use fertilizer from bread, then it should be a sourdough that is not too saturated with yeast fungus, made from 1 part bread, 5 parts herbal gruel and 15 parts water.
If the housewife soaked the bread without a herbal component, instead of water, weak herbal decoctions with the addition of ash can be used, and ash can also be added to the soaked bread.
Reviews from owners of summer cottages confirm that root fertilizing with bread, carried out twice - first at the stage of the beginning of fruiting and later - during the formation of full-fledged cucumbers, helps to avoid curvature and yellowing of the fruits on the bush, which will already indicate a high-quality harvest.
