For planting cucumbers on a windowsill or balcony, ordinary varieties are not suitable, since they need insect pollination. If you are not going to teach children how to be bees, use the female-type cucumber varieties - parthenocarpic hybrids. Remember this couple of words, because biologists are ruthless people and this is how they write on seed packages. Parthenocarpic varieties include Avans F1, Prestige F1, Masha F1, Blanka F1, Real owner F1. There are no seeds in their fruits, but this makes them no less tasty.
How to plant cucumbers at home
You need to plant cucumbers in your home garden so that they have a lot of light. Incandescent, fluorescent or LED lamps are suitable as its source in the evening. For cucumbers on the balcony that are below the level of the windows, shield the light catchers with mirrors and foil.
Soil for the garden on the windowsill and balcony
The cultivation of cucumbers requires fertile and loose soil - a mixture of garden and forest land, humus, sand, ash, sawdust rotten to blackness. It would be nice to bake them in the oven to destroy soil pests. From purchased soils are suitable for pumpkin crops. One plant will grow well in 5 kg of such soil, that is, about 15 kg of soil is needed for a garden on a windowsill, and 25 kg of soil or more for a garden on a balcony.
Sowing and care
When planting cucumbers in the soil, there is always the possibility that some of the seeds will not sprout. For reliability, keep them in a damp cloth at a temperature of 25-28 ° C or in a germinator. Select those that will release the embryonic root after 3 days. If they are treated with fungicides against fungi and diseases and are colored pink or green, they can be sown without germination.
To grow cucumbers, boxes or flower pots with drainage in the form of a layer of expanded clay or stones at the bottom are suitable. Plant the seeds to a depth of 1.5 cm, cover with foil and keep at 25 degrees Celsius. When shoots appear, expose the pots to light and keep the temperature at 20 degrees.
When the fourth and fifth leaves appear on the plants, they need to be pinched at the point of growth. Then lateral shoots will grow, which will delight you with a large number of fruits. You need to leave two or three whips, then you can pinch them over the tenth leaf. A garter on a support or trellis is required.
Cucumbers need warm watering with top dressing - fermented banana peel, diluted with water in a ratio of 1:10. If the house is very warm, then we advise you to grow cucumbers by spraying them with water in the morning and in the evening. You can hold a jar of water next to the pot or place it in a bowl of water. The cucumber loves moisture, but you don't need to keep the soil wet all the time.
Fight disease
Growing cucumbers on the balcony does not protect them from disease. If the leaves of the cucumbers are covered with yellow spots, then this is downy mildew, if white-gray - powdery mildew. Diseases can be fought by spraying the plant with Topaz or a solution of potassium permanganate prepared from 5 liters. water and 0.7 gr. manganese.
If the plant is affected by aphids, spraying with an infusion of red hot pepper or soap with ash will help. To prepare the first, you need to 30 gr. pepper add 200 gr. dust from tobacco. Pour the mixture 200 gr. water with a temperature of 60 ° C. Insist day, strain, add 1 spoonful of liquid soap and 3 tablespoons of ash. An infusion of soap and ash is prepared as follows: in 5 liters. add hot water to 1 glass of ash, stir, add 1 tablespoon of liquid soap.
In order to successfully grow cucumbers on the windowsill, constantly make sure that there is no temperature difference in the place where the pot stands.
