Planting plants of the family of pumpkin: how to distinguish seedlings of zucchini from cucumber? When and how to plant zucchini?

When buying planting material in the horticultural markets, instead of zucchini you can buy cucumbers and vice versa, since it is quite difficult for an inexperienced vegetable gardener to distinguish seedlings of a vegetable marrow from a cucumber, especially at five to seven days old. Plants are green, the cotyledonous leaves are just spread out, they have not even grown quite yet.

How to distinguish seedlings zucchini from cucumber?

Before you go to the market for seedlings (the seed-growing from the nursery is a seedling is not in doubt), you still need to carefully look at the pictures in specialized sources. If suddenly zucchini mixed with cucumbers in seedlings during domestic sowing operations, it's quite easy to distinguish them, you just need to compare the appearance.

The difference is quite fundamental, three factors in common: the shape, size and thickness of the cotyledonous leaves.

The first (not yet real) leaves of cucumber seedlings are slightly more elongated, they have a rounded tip (an almost perfect elongated ellipse), they are thin enough to the touch. Any photo confirms this fact.

Cotyledon leaves of zucchini seedlings are more rounded, tips slightly pointed, thick, slightly folded.

If you pick up two embryos, one will be larger, the stem is thicker - this is a zucchini, the other smaller, the stem is thinner - it's a cucumber.

не всегда получается в фазе семядольных листьев, достаточно дождаться, когда появятся настоящие листья — тут не нужен будет ничей совет: кабачок развивается стремительно в фазе первого настоящего листа, а огурцы как будто застывают на несколько дней в младенческом возрасте. And since it is not always possible to distinguish seedlings of a vegetable marrow from a cucumber in the phase of cotyledonous leaves, it is enough to wait for real leaves to appear - nobody will need advice here: the courgette develops rapidly in the phase of the first real leaf, and the cucumbers seem to freeze for a few days in the infant Age.

When to plant zucchini?

The terms of planting courgettes are affected by two circumstances: recurrent frosts and the beginning of the fruiting period:

• Since zucchini is a subspecies of pumpkin, it means that this plant is thermophilic, completely not tolerating frosts. Low night temperatures, too, he is not happy. Proceeding from this, it can be concluded that it is not worthwhile to drop it into the open ground before the middle of May or the beginning of June. Why open ground? Zucchini has never been the main garden crop, so the question of finding them in greenhouses is never worth it. Usually they are given the place left from other landings.

• Zucchini before fruiting develops within fifty to sixty days. There are three kinds of zucchini: fast-growing, medium-term maturation and late varieties. To ensure that on the table during the summer-autumn season there were fresh zucchini (it is believed that the smaller the zucchini, the more delicate the dish from it), they need to be planted, choosing the timing of maturation. You can drop all varieties at once, the first fruits will appear at different times. You can plant one and the same variety with a break in ten days, then the beginning of fruiting, and hence the dying off of the plant will occur in the same order.

How to plant zucchini: through seedlings or directly into the open ground?

In conditions of warm spring (the climate of the southern regions of the Russian Federation) zucchini are planted directly in the open ground.

In the middle zone of the Russian Federation, when planting zucchini even in the second decade of May is inexpedient in the open ground, truck farmers are beginning to engage in seedlings of early-ripening varieties of courgettes. The differences between cucumber seedlings from zucchini in terms of growth rates and plant size are striking: after the appearance of the first cotyledon leaves, the courgette at twenty to twenty-five degrees (the usual conditions of the window sill) gives two real large leaves a week later, after another week they are five. How to plant such a huge plant in the open ground, how not to damage the roots? Therefore, the zucchini seedlings are placed in sufficiently cold conditions with a temperature of up to fifteen degrees. Then the vegetable does not grow so fast.

The usual practice of planting courgettes in the middle band of the Russian Federation

In the middle of May, seed preparation begins: after rejection, their germination is determined (placed in a solution of salt water), then the seeds are soaked, wrapped in a wet napkin for two days, then placed on the lower shelf of the refrigerator for a day, then kept in a wet napkin until germination.

When the sprout is about two-thirds the length of the seed, the plant can be planted in the ground. Depth of planting - one and a half to two centimeters.

Planted seeds should be covered overnight with a film so that the soil does not cool. It can be closed with a spunbond, so shoots will appear faster and will not need to follow constantly the state of soil moisture. In two or three days there will be amicable shoots, in a month at summer temperatures (not lower than eighteen or twenty degrees in the day, provided that the night temperatures do not fall below twelve degrees), the plant will begin to bloom. Two weeks after this, you can harvest.

This way of planting discards all doubts about the plant's belonging to the species, the question of how to distinguish seedlings from a vegetable marrow from a cucumber, in this situation one can not ask.

Where can you plant zucchini?

By mid-May, places in the garden area are usually planned. To allocate a place for zucchini seedlings it is possible without effort, but it is necessary to imagine in advance that these are huge bushes or whips. Bushes need a lot of space, and the whips will constantly crawl to other ridges. Therefore, a better place than a compost pile, just do not find it. There the courgettes are spacious, warm, they are not overshadowed, the soil is fertile. You just need not forget about the increased watering and weeding of weeds.

What should be done if the vegetable marrow blooms, but there is no fruit?

In an adult plant there are two types of flowers - male (on them - stamens) and female (having a pistil). For pollination, bees are needed. How to attract them to zucchini? Pour the plants with a sweet fragrant syrup, for this you can dilute the old jam. Bees will necessarily arrive.

But in wet rainy weather, even this method will not affect the ripening of zucchini. Therefore, many truck farmers comprehend the art of pollination (they work instead of bees). Armed with brushes, remove pollen from male flowers and transfer to female. Some tear off male flowers and cover them with women. As a result, artificial pollination occurs.