When buying planting material in horticultural markets, instead of zucchini, you can buy cucumbers and vice versa, since it is quite difficult for an inexperienced gardener to distinguish seedlings of zucchini from cucumber, especially at the age of five to seven days. The plants are green, cotyledonous leaves have just stretched out, have not even grown yet.
How to distinguish seedlings of zucchini from cucumber?
Before you go to the market for seedlings (seedling from the nursery seedling is not in doubt), you still need to carefully look at the pictures in specialized sources. If zucchini and cucumbers in seedlings suddenly mix during home sowing, it’s quite easy to distinguish them, you just need to compare the appearance.
The difference is quite dramatic together are three factors: the shape, size and thickness of the cotyledon leaves.
The first (not yet real) leaves of cucumber seedlings are slightly more oblong, have a rounded tip (an almost perfect elongated ellipse), and are quite thin to the touch. Any photo confirms this fact.
The cotyledon leaves of zucchini seedlings are more rounded, the tips are slightly pointed, thick themselves, slightly folded.
If you take two embryos in your hands, one will be larger, the stem is thicker - it is a zucchini, the other is smaller, the stem is thinner - this is a cucumber.
And since it is not always possible to distinguish zucchini seedlings from cucumbers in the phase of cotyledonous leaves, it’s enough to wait until real leaves appear — no advice will be needed: zucchini develops rapidly in the phase of the first real leaf, and cucumbers seem to freeze for several days in the infant age.
When to plant zucchini?
Two factors affect the timing of planting zucchini: return frosts and the beginning of the fruiting period:
Since zucchini is a subspecies of pumpkin, it means that this plant is thermophilic, completely resistant to frost. Low night temperatures are not a joy to him either. Based on this, we can conclude that it is not worth planting it in open ground earlier than mid-May - early 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 assigned the remaining space from other landings.
Zucchini before fruiting develops within fifty to sixty days. There are three types of zucchini: early, mid-ripening and late varieties. In order to have fresh zucchini on the table during the summer-autumn season (it is believed that the smaller the zucchini, the more delicate the dish from it), you need to plant them, choosing the ripening time. You can plant all varieties at once, the first fruits will appear at different times. You can plant the same variety with a break of ten days, then the beginning of fruiting, and hence the death of the plant, will occur in the same order.
How to plant zucchini: through seedlings or directly into the open ground?
In warm spring (the climate of the southern regions of the Russian Federation), vegetable marrows are planted directly in open ground.
In the middle zone of the Russian Federation, when planting zucchini even in the second decade of May is inappropriate in open ground, gardeners begin to deal with seedlings of early ripe varieties of zucchini. The differences in cucumber seedlings from zucchini in terms of growth rate and plant size are striking: after the first cotyledon leaves appear, zucchini at a temperature of twenty - twenty-five degrees (normal window sill conditions) gives two real large leaves a week later, five more in a week. How to plant such a huge plant in open ground, how not to damage the roots? Therefore, zucchini seedlings are placed in fairly cold conditions with temperatures up to fifteen degrees. Then the vegetable does not grow so rapidly.
Common practice of planting zucchini in the middle zone of the Russian Federation
Seed preparation begins in mid-May: after rejection, seed germination is determined (placed in a solution of salt water), then the seeds are soaked by wrapping in a wet towel for two days, then placed on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator for a day, then again kept in a wet towel until germination.
When the sprout will be up to two thirds of the length of the seed, the plant can be planted in the ground. Depth of landing - one and a half to two centimeters.
The planted seeds need to be covered with a film at night so that the soil does not cool. You can close it with a spanbond, and seedlings will appear faster and you will not need to constantly monitor the state of soil moisture. In two or three days, friendly shoots will appear, in a month at summer temperatures (not lower than eighteen to twenty degrees during the day, provided that night temperatures do not drop below twelve degrees), the plant will begin to bloom. Two weeks after this, you can harvest.
This method of planting eliminates all doubts about the plant's belonging to the species, the question of how to distinguish the seedlings of zucchini from cucumber can not be asked in this situation.
Where can I plant zucchini?
By mid-May, places on the garden are usually planned out. You can easily allocate a place for seedlings of zucchini, but you need to imagine in advance that these are huge bushes or lashes. The bushes need a lot of space, and the lashes will constantly crawl to other ridges. Therefore, a better place than a compost heap, simply can not be found.
There, the squash is spacious, warm, nothing shades them, the soil is fertile. It is only necessary not to forget about the intensified watering and weeding of weeds.
What should I do if the zucchini blossoms and there are no fruits?
In an adult plant, there are two types of flowers - male (stamens on them) and female (having a pestle). Bees are needed for pollination. How to attract them to zucchini? Pour the plants with sweet odorous syrup, for this you can dilute the old jam. Bees will surely fly.
But in wet rainy weather, even this method will not affect the maturation of zucchini. Therefore, many gardeners comprehend the art of pollination (work instead of bees). Armed with tassels, remove pollen from male flowers and transfer to female. Some pluck male flowers and close female ones with them. The result is artificial pollination.