Watermelon - growing in the Urals is possible!

Watermelon is not only a wonderful taste and aroma,but also a berry that has many useful properties for the body. For example, it contains fructose, pectin substances that improve digestion, magnesium salts, calcium, iron, fiber and B vitamins. This summer gift helps with anemia, swelling, kidney stones, and also used as a restorative after operations under anesthesia . Few people know that, in addition to pulp, seeds are useful in watermelon. They, along with pumpkin, are anthelmintic and contain a large amount of vitamin D. In rural areas, still with headaches and migraines, thick watermelon crusts are attached to the head instead of tablets.

Volgograd, Astrakhan regions, Kalmykia,Uzbekistan - these are the regions where the watermelon grows. Cultivation of this culture in the Urals is associated with certain difficulties, conditioned, first of all, by climatic conditions. This berry is very thermophilic: it needs at least 17 ° C for germination, and for optimal growth it is more than 25 ° C in the daytime and from 18 ° C at night. Watermelons, growing in the Urals, which are often hampered by high humidity, require enough dry air (60-70%). Excessive "water" leads to fungal diseases, plant death or significant deterioration in the quality of the fetus.

What you need to do to get at yourvegetable garden delicious watermelon? Growing in the Urals and in the middle zone of Russia assumes a very careful approach to the selection of seed material. Specialists recommend varieties "Sugar Toddler", "Skorik" or "Ogonek", which ripen in 60-70 days, which exactly correspond to the warm season. The group F1 ("Krimstar", "Moscow Region Charleston", etc.) is also suitable. But these plants do not give good seeds for the next year. When choosing a variety, you need to look at the number of days from the ovary of the fruit until it is ready. It depends on it, whether the watermelon will mature, the cultivation in the Urals is limited to the warm days of a short summer. You can also pay attention to the shape of the fruit, large-fruited, transportable, if you are going to grow products for sale. Packets with seeds should be taken only in special stores, because in the markets they can be fumigated because of incorrect storage.

So, we want to get watermelons in the Urals. Cultivation of the crop begins with the washing of the seed in a solution of potassium permanganate in a slightly pink color. This is achieved disinfection and rejection of pop-up copies. Then follows the warming up of the seeds in the battery (the temperature should not exceed 50 ° C), which must be started about a week before the expected sowing. The sowing is usually done in the middle or end of April.

Seeds can be dropped into milk bagsdepth of about 3 cm, preliminarily shedding the earth with a hot solution of potassium permanganate. The package is closed with polyethylene and placed on the sunny side of the window. The optimum temperature for seedlings is about 27 ° C, with the seedlings ready in a month (3-5 leaves).

If you do not want the weather to ruin yourwatermelon, the cultivation of this plant in the Urals must begin under the film, planting seedlings in the 15-20th of May. The distance between the shoots should be about half a meter, about 1 kg of compost is applied to each well and the strait is made with warm water. A cupboard should slightly rise above the ridge (a couple of centimeters), so that the plant does not rot. The film is removed from the ridges in the middle-end of June, when the watermelon blooms. After the formation of 2-3 fruits, the remaining ovaries are cut, remove excess branches, so that the remaining watermelons receive more light. Maturity of the fruit is determined not by size, but by the apparent clear pattern, the reduction of the wax coating, the muffled sound when tapping. The ability to distinguish a mature fruit from immature comes only with experience. And the experience makes it possible to grow any exotic varieties, like a watermelon with a yellow flesh or a square shape.