If the shelves of specialized stores are filled with all sorts of varieties and types of tomatoes, don’t panic. For the convenience of buyers, the seed bags themselves describe the type and where, in what area, tomatoes can be planted.
Description
Tomato is a vegetable that contains a storehouse of vitamins and minerals. Has healing properties. They can be included in the diet for the treatment and prevention of many diseases.
To get a good harvest, owners need to know what varieties can be planted in a given area.After all, scientists and breeders try, when developing new varieties, to take into account the area in which they will grow, so that the seeds are already inoculated with adaptation to the climate where tomatoes will grow and bear fruit.
Tomatoes for northern regions should have time to germinate and form faster in a short summer. Tomatoes grown in the northern regions have smaller leaves; they are arranged in a unique way along the stem. This gives a greater flow of sunlight to the fruit and speeds up its ripening.
Tomato varieties for northern regions do not have a lot of foliage on the stems; they are acclimatized to short, hot summers. These are varieties with limited growth of the central stem, which ends in a flower raceme.
The varieties of the northern regions are frost-resistant, because frosts are frequent guests both in autumn and spring. This characteristic feature is present in literally all types of tomatoes that are grown in the northern lands. But there are also differences: ripening time, taste, place of cultivation - in a greenhouse, in open ground.
There are two types:
- Low-growing - they can grow both in greenhouses and in open ground. These varieties are preferred for growing in greenhouses. They are small in stature, have early ripening and high yield. But the biggest disadvantage is that they are prone to a wide variety of diseases that this vegetable suffers from.
- Tall - special varieties with almost 2-meter stems. They require a lot of attention; they should be tied up and supported or arched. They stretch upward and take up very little space in width, compared to their brothers - “kids”. This species bears fruit longer and more, but the vegetable itself ripens later.
Each type has pros and cons; when choosing seeds, you should pay attention to this.
Growing methods
In harsh climatic conditions, it is advisable to grow this vegetable in greenhouses. And with the sowing of seeds of early varieties, these types of tomatoes are already beginning to delight their owners somewhere after 3 months from the moment of sowing.
No matter how the sowing is done, in order for the harvest to be good, you must adhere to several rules of agronomy. Warm soil is required, you can do without natural heating, use hot water running through pipes or a device designed to convert electrical energy into heat.
It is necessary to prepare the beds, disinfect them, fluff them up, and apply both mineral and organic fertilizers.
Make a mound up to 15 cm in height along the entire length of the bed. Before sowing, seeds should also be disinfected and temperature changes should be made. This process requires painstakingness. Soak the seeds located between the layers of material in water at 20 degrees Celsius. After they are completely immersed, we leave them in this water overnight.
After this time, we remove it from the water and place it on the middle shelf of the refrigerator overnight. And so on for 14 days. With this hardening, weak, infected seeds die, and natural selection occurs.
It can be treated with potassium permanganate (to make the water pinkish) to destroy a variety of pathogenic microbes. Treat seeds with growth stimulants. The next step is to plant them in a box with soil (it is up to 3 cm thick). When the seeds are placed on the soil, they should be sprinkled on top with dry soil to a thickness of about 1 cm.
If you follow these instructions, the first sprouts will appear after a week of waiting. When 3 leaves hatch, picking is required. It is needed to strengthen the root system.When the roots have been bitten, each sprout is planted in a separate pot and placed in a lighted place, perhaps on a windowsill.
If the planting day is determined, then about 7 days before it, it is advisable to start placing pots of seedlings outside to harden them. We plant the plant in greenhouses, on hills in May. Depressions are made on the hills; they should be 50 cm apart from each other.
Before planting greenhouses in the soil, we treat the holes with a biostimulant. Seedlings, after being planted in a greenhouse, cannot be watered immediately. You need to let it strengthen in the ground for 3 days, otherwise the seedlings may get sick.
Next you need to carry out watering, loosening (this should take place once every 7 days), and hilling is a must. Depending on which variety is chosen for planting, it is necessary to carry out gartering and the obligatory formation of the skeleton of the bush. Tomato feeding must be carried out 7 days after planting it either in the ground or in a greenhouse. After the first feeding, the next one should be done after 7 days.
Planting tomato seedlings in the northern regions should be done after the soil has warmed up, in early June, and the biological thermometer is the blossoming of birch leaves. Vegetables can be planted in one bed for no more than 2 years. It is good for tomatoes to plant them in the place where zucchini and melon were previously grown.
It is advisable to lay out the planting beds in a place where the tomatoes will be protected from gusty winds and will be provided with daytime heating. An undesirable neighbor is potatoes, because the Colorado potato beetle does not disdain tomatoes.
Soil for planting vegetables is prepared in the fall. To do this, remove quarantine weeds, dig up the ground to a depth of 30 cm (full of a shovel), and it won’t hurt to water the planting site in the spring with diluted copper sulfate.It is prepared simply: 1 tbsp. l. Pour the chemical into a bucket of water, the yield is 2 liters per 1 m2.
Then wait 2-3 days and boldly plant the seedlings. Inspect the seedlings and remove weak plants. A day before planting, water the flowerpots with vegetables so that when removing it from the flowerpot, the injury is minimal, because the less damage to the root system, the faster the tomato will take root in the soil.
The best varieties of tomatoes, small-growing and early-ripening ones, are suitable for planting in open ground. These varieties are planted with a pattern of 30x40 cm, the depth of the hole should be 20 cm, and the diameter 30 cm. You need to put 1 cup of humus in the finished dug hole, mix it with soil and pour 1.5 liters of water.
Plant tomatoes standing and sprinkle with soil up to the cotyledon leaves. Trample the earth around the stem. It is advisable to plant tomatoes in gloomy weather or at night so that the seedlings do not get sunburn. Growing seedlings to full maturity is a lot of work: watering, fertilizing, and also fighting insects, parasites, and frost.
Features of care
If frosts are expected, you need to prepare bags and matting to cover the plants in advance, and if they are prolonged, do a high hilling. When they pass, carefully open them.
We should not forget about temperature and drainage conditions. After watering, it is necessary to make a sharovka, loosen the soil, and prevent the formation of earthen crust. Seedlings in this position lose a lot of liquid. To prevent this from happening, the soil under the seedlings should be mulched. Peat, straw, and sawdust are suitable for this. Having created good conditions, productive varieties of tomatoes will thank their owners with strong, beautiful fruits.
When watering, you can also feed vegetables.To protect against late blight, pour water with the addition of manganese at the rate of 2 g per 10 liters of water. Don’t forget to spray the bushes with a mixture of 1 gram of boric acid diluted in 1 liter of water when the bushes are flowering. These foliar sprays provide a stimulus for the appearance of more ovaries.
This procedure is best done in dry, windless weather. There is also a store-bought preparation “Ovary”, also for sprinkling flowers and improving the ovary.
Varieties for the northern regions
Good tomato varieties from the northern regions are: Alaska, Metelitsa, Polyarny, Betta. Of these, productive and quickly ripening: Taimyr, Bullfinch, Yamal.
Agronomists and geneticists have grown resistant tomatoes that produce high-quality, good fruits for open ground in the northern regions. Let's take a look at some of them:
- Polar - refers to an early ripening variety, has a bush shape that grows without branching and without side shoots. It forms 4 clusters of fairly large fruits, which are shaped like an apple, the fruit weighs 150 grams, and can set an ovary in poor lighting.
- Taimyr is a very fast ripening variety, a standard plant bush, fruits weighing 80 - 100 grams, round and beautiful. Tolerates sudden drops in temperature very well. It has a rare property for the north - it can produce new shoots and fruits after freezing. It is considered the best in early ripeness and has an ordinary bush appearance. Of the early varieties, it has the largest fruit, which weighs up to 180 grams. A distinctive feature from the rest of the early ripening varieties is that they are “immune” to the bacterial disease of tomatoes throughout Russia - late blight (a fungal plant disease).
If signs of this disease are detected, spraying should be done immediately.Tomatoes both in the greenhouse and in open ground should be treated with the chemical Oxyx and it is advisable to repeat this procedure 3 times during the season.
Manipulations should be carried out in warm, sunny weather; it should not rain 24 hours before spraying so that the bactericide can act on contaminated areas. You need to sprinkle it very carefully, literally wrap it in the preparation from all sides, you need the sprayer to have small holes. Make sure that there are no dry places on the bush, otherwise the disease may progress. In this case, you cannot spray with a broom. It will not provide a complete, protective layer to the entire plant.
It is worth planting not just one, but several types of this vegetable. This way you can understand and choose exactly the variety and type that will delight you with its taste qualities both fresh and canned.
