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Tomatoes are delicious, healthy and beautiful. Did you know that they came to Europe as an ornamental plant and were cultivated for a long time solely due to their beauty? Probably, they had not yet heard of late blight. Only practical Italians immediately began to eat them. And the summer salad of cucumbers and tomatoes so beloved by everyone should be eaten as little as possible - the combination of these vegetables prevents the absorption of vital vitamin C. Tomatoes, of course, are beautiful, especially when they are not sick, but today we grow them in order to diversify our diet ... In this article, we will show you how to prepare soil for tomato seedlings.
Soil value for seedlings
Just as the theater begins with a hanger, so the seedling begins with the ground. A high-quality earthen mixture for growing it is the key to a good future harvest. If it turns out to be not good enough, then the tomatoes will be sick or weak and we will not get a full harvest. Or worse, the seedlings will die and we will have to start all over again or buy them from the market.
You can't just take a shovel and dig up garden soil or bring soil from a greenhouse - with almost a 100% probability, nothing good will come of it. The soil for tomato seedlings is prepared from several components that require appropriate preparation. Only large farms grow tomato seedlings on pure peat, pre-processing it and saturating it with fertilizers and special additives. But they have the appropriate industrial equipment for these purposes.
And do we need tomatoes, pumped up with chemistry to the eyeballs even before planting in the soil? It is better to spend some time and independently prepare the soil for tomato seedlings.
Requirements for soil
The main requirement is that the soil must contain everything necessary for growing tomato seedlings. It should be:
- loose;
- water and breathable;
- moderately fertile, that is, contain sufficient, but not excessive amounts of nutrients necessary for tomato seedlings at first;
- neutral or slightly acidic;
- purified, namely: do not contain toxic substances dangerous to humans or plants, harmful microorganisms, seeds weeds, spores of fungi, as well as eggs or larvae of insects, worms.
Components used for soil
Each gardener has his own recipe for preparing soil for tomato seedlings. They can have various components of both organic and inorganic origin, they can add or not add fertilizers. But in all, people sometimes successfully grow tomato seedlings for decades. It is impossible to say which soil is correct or the best. Any soil component for tomato seedlings taken in one area can be very different from the same component originating from another region.
Even in the same garden Earthtaken from under the plantings of legumes will be strikingly different from the soil where the sunflower grew.
Soil for tomato seedlings can consist of the following organic components:
- sod land;
- meadow land;
- peat (lowland, medium, high-moor);
- well-rotted leaf humus (its chemical composition will differ greatly depending on the tree species whose leaves were involved in the preparation of compost, for example, if there were a lot of nut leaves, our seedlings may not sprout at all);
- well rotted and frozen humus of cattle;
- sphagnum moss;
- garden land (although this is not recommended, many gardeners use it, and successfully);
- fallen needles;
- coconut fiber;
- rotted sawdust.
Tomato seedling soil may or may not contain:
- sand;
- perlite;
- hydrogel;
- vermiculite.
Often (but not all and not always), when preparing the soil for seedlings, they are used as auxiliary substances:
- wood ash;
- a piece of chalk;
- dolomite flour;
- lime.
Ash acts as a protective agent against diseases and pests, fertilizer and natural soil deoxidizer. Its chemical properties are highly dependent on the type of wood being burned.
As you can see, there are many components, and if you consider that most often the soil for growing seedlings consists of 3-4 components, it would be more accurate to say that there are a lot of them.
In no case should you use:
- manure (firstly, tomatoes do not like it, secondly, it oxidizes the soil, thirdly, there is a lot of nitrogen, fourthly, it probably contains a lot of organisms pathogenic for seedlings);
- not completely rotted leaf humus (it can simply burn the roots of the seedlings);
- any land infested with insects, worms or weeds;
- hay dust.
Preparing the land for seedlings
Before sowing tomato seeds, pre-planting soil preparation must be carried out. We must kill all spores of fungi and bacteria, insects and their larvae. You also need to try to get rid of weed seeds that may be in the ground. Again, each gardener does this preparation in his own way. Can:
- Freeze the soil... For this, some people repeatedly expose containers with earth to the frost in winter, then they bring it in and let it thaw, freeze it again, and so on several times. Perhaps this is correct, but it is a painfully time-consuming process. In addition, if, for example, earth is poured into a bag, it is difficult to carry it back and forth. In addition, thawing can severely stain the floor. And not everyone has such a warm room where bags of soil could stand, but they thaw for a long time. Most often, they are initially placed in a cold garage or shed, and about a week before sowing, tomato seedlings are brought into the room.
- Calcining the soil... The earth is poured into a layer of about 5 cm on a sheet and placed in an oven heated to 70-90 degrees for half an hour. This must be done in advance so that the soil can colonize with beneficial microorganisms.
- Steaming the soil... Here, too, there is no limit to folk imagination. The earth must be kept above boiling water for at least 10 minutes. For this purpose, use a colander, a double boiler, just cheesecloth.
- Soil disinfection... This is perhaps the least time consuming method, but it will not get rid of weed seeds. For these purposes, iodine (3 drops per 10 liters), 1% solution of potassium permanganate, antifungal drugs, insecticides + fungicides are used.
If you use sawdust or pine needles, pour boiling water over them, cover the dishes with a lid and cool. Drain the water, pour boiling water over again and insist.
Making soil for seedlings
As we said, there are a lot of recipes for making soil for tomato seedlings. See which components are easiest for you to get and prepare the substrate from them. Someone just needs to go outside and walk 100-200 meters to collect silt peat, but for someone it is simply impossible to get it. For some, it is expensive to buy perlite, vermiculite, coconut fiber or sphagnum moss.
If you have all the components for making soil at hand, but it turns out to be excessively acidic, you can deoxidize it with dolomite flour or lime.
Explaining: dolomite flour is a fertilizer in itself, it will be a real find for nutrient-poor components. If you add it to the soil containing black soil, you will get an excess of fertilizer. Fatty, rich earths are deoxidized with chalk or lime.
Sometimes it is necessary, on the contrary, to increase the acidity of the soil. This is easily done by adding a little high-moor peat - it is fibrous, has a reddish color and is acidic.
We give several recipes for preparing soil for tomato seedlings, but we repeat, there are a lot of them:
- Sand, high-moor and lowland peat in a ratio of 1: 1: 1.
- Leaf humus, sod earth, sand, perlite in a ratio of 3: 3: 4: 0.5.
- Peat, sand, wood ash - 10: 5: 1.
- Steamed sawdust, sand, wood ash - 10: 5: 1 + 1 tbsp. l of nitrogen fertilizer per bucket of mixture (such a mixture must be mixed very carefully so that the nitrogen is evenly distributed);
- Steamed needles, sand, wood ash - 10: 5: 1;
- Sod land, well-rotted manure, peat, sand - 2: 0.5: 8: 2 + 3 tbsp. l azofoski on a bucket of mixture.
If your soil is very dense, add perlite or vermiculite.
Often, after growing tomato seedlings, we do not know what to do with the waste soil. In no case should you leave it for the next year. You cannot pour it into the place where nightshade crops will grow - potatoes, tomatoes, peppers. It is best to pour it on a heap with young compost, which will mature for at least another year.
Use of garden land
There have been disputes over the use of garden land for many decades. Some argue that it should never be used, others smile, and for many years they have been successfully growing tomato seedlings on it.
You can take garden soil, it is believed that if it enters the soil mixture for growing seedlings as one of the components, tomatoes will better transfer transplanting into open ground. It is best to take it:
- From a slide filled with a mole;
- From under the planting of legumes, cucumbers, zucchini, corn, beets, carrots, greens.
Do not use under any circumstances:
- Greenhouse soil;
- From under the planting of potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage.
Ready soils
Of the ready-made soils, only a special substrate for growing seedlings is suitable - the rest contain fertilizers in a concentration unacceptable for small tomatoes. And although the finished soils can be of different quality, they have to be used if there is no opportunity, time or desire to make up a complex soil mixture.
We advise you to buy several bags of seedling soil from different manufacturers and plant seeds in them, labeling the container. Subsequently, you will be able to buy the land that produced the best results.
Purchased soil also requires pre-planting preparation:
- Place the bag in a metal bucket;
- Carefully fill it with boiling water along the wall;
- Cover the bucket with a lid;
- Leave to cool completely.
As you can see, the selection and preparation of the soil is a serious matter. But after gaining a certain skill, this task will not seem so difficult. Have a nice harvest!
Watch a short video on making soil for tomato seedlings:
