Sweet pepper is popular among gardeners and gardeners in our country. Its cultivation requires special preparation, in particular, the timely planting of seedlings in open ground. Seedlings of sweet pepper should be planted in late February - early March. She is prepared one of the first, because its growth is quite long (from seven to thirty days). It is important not to miss the planting period, because otherwise the pepper will not bloom at all and, accordingly, will not yield a crop.
Preparation for this process is quite simple: first you need to choose a capacity for planting (for example, boxes for seedlings) and a soil mixture. A little trick: seedlings of sweet pepper are grown from seeds that are sown in soil treated with boiling water. It is necessary to pour boiling water over the soil, so wrap the box so that everything is steamed. This is done in order to carry out the destruction of larvae and weeds, as well as to disinfect the soil. Moreover, a similar procedure should be done not only with seedlings of pepper, but also when planting other crops. After a few days, the box must be opened, then treated with a solution of potassium permanganate. When the top layer is a little dry, you need to level it and make the grooves with a depth a little less than a centimeter. The distance between the grooves is about 2.5 cm. It is after this that the sowing of sweet pepper for seedlings begins. But this happens after a certain preparation of seeds.
Preparing the seeds is simple: they need to be soaked for 15-20 minutes in brine, and then lowered into a solution with a biostimulant. If after some time the seeds remained on the surface, and did not go to the bottom, like the rest, they must be removed, since they are of poor quality. Although seed-harvesting firms sometimes carry out specialized drying, in this case the seeds all become light and float at the top. But this is rare, therefore, in order to exclude marriage in seeds, it is better to remove those that did not sink to the bottom.
After this, the seeds need to be laid out and covered with earth without tamping. When you water them, the soil is compacted. And if it gets a little sunlight, the earth will become even harder. In order that seedlings of sweet pepper do not dry out, the sowing container is covered with glass or polyethylene, only then it is placed in a warm place. It should be remembered that the temperature in this room should not be less than twenty degrees. Otherwise, you simply will not wait for the shoots. The most favorable temperature for seedlings is 25 degrees. And every three days you need to open the boxes for a while, and when the seedlings begin to rise above the ground, the boxes should be placed in a place with good access to sunlight. It is advisable to lower the temperature a little at this time. The most favorable option in this case is the windowsill.
Timely watering - this is the main care that seedlings of sweet pepper need. Moreover, when the seedlings reach the age of two weeks, you can use a complex fertilizer solution as top dressing . The appearance of several true leaves is a signal that the seedlings need to be peeled. Each pepper should be planted in an individual box, removing the tip of the core root for branching the root system. After this, you need to wait about another 20 days and re-carry out the same feeding as before.
Sweet pepper transplants occur around the end of May or in early June. Transplantation can be done either in the greenhouse area or in open ground. In order to correctly determine the degree of readiness of seedlings for transplanting into the soil, you need to count the leaves on peppers. The optimal number of true leaves is 16-18 pieces. You also need to take into account the age of seedlings: the cultivation of seedlings of sweet pepper should last at least two months.