Seedlings in peat cups - a guarantee of the harvest. DIY pots for seedlings How to make peat pots

15.06.2019

Each summer season begins with the cultivation of seedlings. Everyone understands why this is being done - you can significantly increase the growing season and get not only an earlier, but also a much larger harvest. On the territory of our country there are regions in which heat-loving vegetables cannot be grown in any other way.

As the first stage of development passes, so the subsequent ones will continue - this is the law of nature. To improve the development of plants, many gardeners and gardeners use peat pots. How to use these little helpers? Should I buy them for growing seedlings? Consider the pros and cons of such glasses.

What are they made of?

Before you buy peat pots for seedlings, find out what they are made of. Such devices are made from peat, to which cardboard or wood is added. Most of all, gardeners praise cups with a ratio of the main substance of 70% and additives of 30%. Beware of low-quality goods, it happens that unscrupulous manufacturers increase the percentage of impurities, or even use only cheap cardboard. Before you buy agricultural machinery, read what is written on the package.

Environmental justifications

Peat products have many advantages over their counterparts made of plastic, paper or ceramics. For plants, this will be a real environmentally friendly home. The peat used for the manufacture of containers for growing seedlings does not contain pathogenic microflora, there are no weed seeds. In such products, the content of harmful toxic substances, such as heavy metals, benzopyrene residues and pesticides, is significantly lower. The concentration of such substances will be several times lower than the permissible agriculture norms for growing plants and crops. Peat, which is light in weight, is safe for use, it does not contain pathogens of various diseases of vegetable and flower crops.

When choosing peat pots for growing seedlings, carefully inspect them. For good quality products, the wall thickness should be one to one and a half millimeters. Such walls will be strong enough to last the entire period of plant development, but at the same time, the roots of the seedlings will be able to develop unhindered. After planting in the soil, a quality pot will begin to quickly disintegrate, thereby facilitating the work of harvesting the fields. The decay period for quality products lasts approximately 27-32 days.

Peat pots for seedlings. Pros of using

Due to the porous walls, the best air-water regime of the root layer is provided. During planting in the ground, plants freely take root through the walls and bottom.
Such containers do not contain pathogens and toxic substances, while they have high mechanical strength both in wet and dry conditions.
When planting seedlings together with a pot in the ground, the survival rate reaches almost 100%. Later, when decomposed, the pot will serve as fertilizer.
Due to the accelerated survival of seedlings, an earlier harvest is harvested, mainly for this, seedlings are planted in peat pots.

How to use? General requirements for the use of peat pots

The containers are filled with preliminarily slightly moistened nutrient soil, slightly crushed. After that, it starts in peat pots. You can sow bulbs, cuttings or seedlings.
Place the prepared cups on pallets, pesos, plastic wrap, gravel or soil.
Seedlings should be watered frequently to keep the soil moist.
We must not allow the peat pots to dry out. How to use them correctly? Wrap each unit with foil - this will help prevent drying out. Otherwise, the salt contained in the ground may crystallize and, in concentrated form, pose a danger to tender seedlings.
When the plants begin to grow, the pots should be spaced more freely to increase light and aeration. In addition, with a more spacious arrangement, the interweaving of the root systems of neighboring plants is prevented.
Growing seedlings in peat pots ends with planting in the ground. You do not need to dig up the plants, plant them directly with the old container.

Seedlings of zucchini, cucumbers, pumpkins, eggplants, squash

Seedlings of these crops do not like transplantation. In order for the plants to take root, take peat pots for growing. How to use them? What size would be preferable?

For seedlings of cucumbers intended for planting in protected ground, pots with a diameter of 11 cm are suitable. The cultivation period is approximately 30 days. How to plant in peat pots? One germinated seed is sown in one cup.

If vegetables are to be planted in open ground, then for seedlings of zucchini, squash and cucumbers, you should choose containers with a diameter of 8 cm, for pumpkin better fit 11 cm and planted one in each pot. Planting depth 1 cm. Cucumbers can be planted 2 pieces in one container.

On average, pumpkin seedlings will be ready in 20 days, and other vegetables in a month. You can calculate yourself optimal timing landing.

Ready pots are placed on pallets close to each other, watered thoroughly and left in a warm place where the temperature is maintained at 25-30 degrees until germination. When yellow-green sprouts appear, the temperature should be reduced to 20-22 degrees. Such temperature regime supported 2-3 days.

Watering

Watering cucumber seedlings warm water heated to 25-30 degrees. If there is cold watering, the plants can get sick or even die.

hardening

To prevent plant diseases after transplanting into the ground, they are hardened - 7-10 days before planting - the premises are often ventilated, the temperature is reduced to 15 degrees, and watered less often.

Landing in open ground

Prepared plants are planted in the soil directly in pots. Some gardeners break cups before planting or pull out seedlings along with an earthen clod. That's how you can do it too. However, gardeners who used peat pots to grow seedlings leave the following planting reviews - they believe that it is better to make holes in the containers beforehand. Decaying, the cups will nourish the plant, helping to get a big harvest.

cabbage seedling

In March, cabbage is sown in special boxes. After the appearance of seedlings, they swoop down, and planting in peat pots begins. Cups with a diameter of about 7 cm are suitable. You can use round specimens or peat blocks, in which there are 6 cells at once. At the end of April, you can start landing in

lettuce seedling

Lettuce seedlings for planting in protected ground are prepared by picking seedlings into pots. Suitable pots measuring 50x50 mm or, as they are also called, peat cells. In about a month, the seedlings will be ready for planting in a greenhouse or greenhouse.

The roots of many plants can penetrate the bottom and walls of peat cups. However, most gardeners do not wait for this - they are guided by the size of the aerial part of the seedlings.

Experienced gardeners say that if you immerse peat pots in before planting warm water until the release of air bubbles from the walls stops, then the soaked walls and bottom will not create obstacles and will be easily processed by soil inhabitants.

Disadvantages of peat pots

Not all plants tolerate the acidic environment that is inherent in peat. Some manufacturers add special mineral fertilizers to the products, as well as lime and chalk, which reduce acidity.
Requires frequent watering.
Evaporating from the surface of the pots, the water greatly cools the soil, as a result, the root system develops much worse.
Some plants cannot break through the peat walls, they have to be taken out of the containers when transplanting.
Often mold appears on low-quality pots, the walls are destroyed
The high cost of peat cups, especially when growing large volumes of seedlings.

Unfortunately, some unscrupulous manufacturers give out pots made from ordinary cardboard as high-quality peat products. Gardeners complain that sometimes in the fall, when digging up a plot, they find undecomposed pots with the remains of roots.

The choice of containers for seedlings is huge. But not every summer resident can fork out every spring for a purchase or. Healthy and strong seedlings grow in homemade containers - especially if you take the time and make nutrient pots for seedlings with your own hands.

Such home-made seedling pots compare favorably with purchased options in that their composition is under the control of the grower.

In Runet there are several dozen recipes for preparing a substrate for nutrient cubes. The main thing is that such mixtures meet the requirements of breathability, moisture capacity, high nutritional value and be free from diseases and pests.

The composition usually includes peat, garden, turf and compost land. To normalize acidity, lime is sometimes included in them, and to give looseness - straw cutting, sand, sawdust. Supporters of "mineral water" add complex fertilizers to the substrate.

The binding component, thanks to which the container retains its shape, is mullein soaked in water.

Let's look at the optimal proportions of each of the components in the manufacture of pots for seedlings with our own hands. Please note for different cultures they will be different.

For squash, zucchini, cucumber and pumpkin, take five parts of decomposed peat, three parts of humus soil, one part of soddy soil and one part of fresh manure (preferably mullein). If peat is not available, use mature compost in the same ratio instead.

An equally good result is obtained if you prepare a mixture of the following composition for pumpkin vegetables: seven parts of ripe humus, two parts of soddy land and one part of fresh cow dung.

And here is a simple recipe for making universal pots or cubes for growing seedlings.

Combine equal parts garden compost and humus soil.
For 8-10 liters of the mixture, add 1.5-2 cups of ash.
Mix one part cow dung and nine parts water.
Moisten the soil mixture with the nutrient composition so that it does not crumble into pieces during molding.

Just do not add too much mullein, otherwise the substrate will become very compact and the roots of the plants will experience oxygen starvation.
It is convenient to make pots for seedlings with your own hands from paper. To do this, you will need a 1.5-liter bottle and paper blanks measuring 25 x 16 centimeters or 20 x 12 centimeters (for smaller cups). The diameter of such containers will be 7 and 6 centimeters, respectively, and the height - 10 and 8 centimeters.

I advise you to make the cups two-layered: the bottle is wrapped around the first strip along the chosen height. And the second is applied so that its middle falls on the seam of the first. Then a free piece of paper at the bottom is pressed to the bottom of the bottle. And everything your free seedling pot is ready to use.

For growing seedlings, a variety of containers will fit. For this purpose, milk bags, glasses of sour cream, ice cream, mineral water, buckets of mayonnaise and so on are suitable.

Just do not forget to make at least 5 holes with a diameter of 2-3 millimeters each in the bottom of the cups before laying the soil mixture. This will facilitate the access of air to the roots of the seedling and prevent them from getting wet during excessive watering.

I also recommend you check out detailed overview all options, .

Watch the video tutorial on how to make seedling cups in just 5 seconds.

What is the best way to grow seedlings? This question has to be solved by every novice gardener and, paradoxically, finding the answer to it is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. Let's still try to find out in which container it is better to grow seedlings.

It would seem that the answer is obvious and simple: in pots. Why? Yes, because seedling pots make it possible to do without seedlings - when transplanting, you simply put them into the ground. Due to this, the probability of damage to young fragile roots of plants becomes almost zero. The risk of damage to plants by root rot is also minimized, which, you see, is also important.

But here's the bad luck: placing pots on the windowsills is extremely inconvenient, and there are few of them placed there.

seedling boxes make it possible to significantly save precious space. Plants are easy to care for, and the boxes themselves are easy to carry if necessary. But even here, not everything is so rosy. Some gardeners (to which, until recently, I belonged) prefer to grow seedlings in boxes, the size of which matches the size of the window sills as much as possible. Boxes can be made of wood and plastic, ready-made and home-made, the main requirement is that they should be as convenient as possible.

The easiest option for growing seedlings is an ordinary wooden box. It will not be difficult to put together this container from ordinary boards. Having built a box, do not forget to make a plywood stand under it and line it from the inside. plastic wrap otherwise it will leak water. Everything seems to be clear, but...

Despite the obvious advantages of a wooden box (simplicity of manufacture and relatively low cost), there are also disadvantages. So, it is quite difficult to extract seedlings from it without injuring the root system. A box of boards weighs quite a lot by itself, but what if it is still filled with earth? So think about it, is it worth making it at all?

How it used to be: paper honeycombs

Just a few years ago, seedlings were massively grown in paper honeycombs, an invention of a team of Finnish scientists. The meaning was as follows: the seeds were sown in paper cells, pre-filled with a nutrient soil mixture, and when the time came, the seedlings were planted in the ground along with these cells. Thanks to such a cunning technique, the root system was not damaged, the seedlings continued to grow quietly, without getting sick and, most importantly, without wasting time for survival.

Finnish paper honeycombs standard size- 60x40 cm, while the number of cells in them could be different: 48 cells 8x8 cm in size, 130 or 238 cells 5x5 cm in size - the choice of one of the options depended on which crops were going to be grown in them.

Over time, their use has become inappropriate, and it is very difficult to find paper honeycombs for sale today. At least I didn't succeed. But new, more durable and easy-to-use containers for growing seedlings have appeared, which we will talk about in more detail now.

peat pots

Growing seedlings in peat pots is very convenient and efficient.

There are several reasons for this:

very easy to use: just fill them with lightly moistened nutrient soil, place them on trays and sow-plant seeds and bulbs;
thanks to the porous material of the product, an optimal water-air regime is ensured inside the pots themselves, which means that the seedlings grow and develop rapidly;
when planting in the ground, the tender roots of plants are not injured, because they are transplanted together with a pot, through the walls of which the roots freely germinate into the ground, which ensures almost 100% survival rate of seedlings;
the peat pots themselves are strong enough, made from environmentally friendly material, therefore they do not contain various toxic substances and pathogens;
over time, the pots simply decompose in the ground, becoming an excellent fertilizer for planted plants;
due to the fact that seedlings grown in peat pots quickly take root, we get an earlier harvest, which, you see, is also important.

Despite a lot of obvious advantages, peat pots have a number of significant shortcomings, which should be taken into account, especially if you are sorely lacking time to monitor seedlings:

the soil in peat pots should not dry out even occasionally, otherwise the soil in them will become like a lump, fall behind the walls and literally turn to stone;
it is equally impossible to overdo it with watering, otherwise the walls peat pots quickly covered, and the soil mixture itself will become like jelly.

Output: it is possible and necessary to grow seedlings in peat pots, but so that your labors are not in vain, do not sow seeds in them, but dive already grown seedlings with a developed root system that can regulate the water regime.

Peat tablets for growing seedlings are compressed fine-grained peat with the addition of micronutrients, wrapped on the outside with a thin, strong mesh.

Diameter peat tablets can be different: from 2.5 to 4.5 cm, and the height changes as they swell. So, peat tablets about 8 mm high, placed in a pallet and filled with water, after some time increase in height by about 5-7 times, after which seeds can be sown in the recesses from above. Due to the convenient form of tablets and the unique qualities of peat (water and air permeability), the root system of plants develops freely and quickly.

Despite a lot of advantages, peat tablets have and limitations:

a fairly high cost, which is important, especially when it comes to a large number of seedlings;
the need, as in the case of peat pots, to constantly control the humidity, preventing drying out.

But there is also good news: ! If you don't like this method, ! Coconut tablets have also appeared on sale, so the choice is yours.

Choose peat and coconut tablets in our catalog, which includes offers from various online stores planting material. :

Of course, or there is no point in an eggshell - it is too big. But it is quite possible to sow some small flowers. Just collect the shells in autumn-winter period- during cooking, do not break the egg completely, but break its crown, take out the contents and use a knife to smooth the sharp edges of the shell. Then take an awl or a knitting needle and pierce the bottom of the shell with it, thus making a hole for water to drain. Place the prepared (thoroughly washed or boiled) shells in a container before sowing the seeds (an ordinary cardboard egg tray is best).

Fill the shells with nutrient mixture and safely sow. By the time of planting in the ground, the seedlings in the shell will grow strong and stocky. In order not to damage its roots, gently squeeze the shell in your hand so that it cracks, and calmly plant the plant in the hole. You should not throw away the eggshell itself - with it, the plant will additionally receive fresh fertilizer, because the shell contains lime, which, as you know, is simply necessary for normal development plants. Plus, the acidity of the soil will decrease, its structure will improve.

Here are a few more publications that will surely come in handy for many summer residents: And what containers do you use for growing seedlings?

With the advent of the new calendar year, every lover of growing vegetables in his own garden is again preoccupied with finding containers for sowing. Almost all gardeners have abandoned the habit of growing seedlings on the windowsill in bulky wooden boxes- they are too inconvenient when transporting to the country. In addition, the tender young seedlings have time to grow into the roots of neighboring plants. The best solution in choosing containers for sowing is a seedling cup.

Buy from a store or make your own?

Of course, production technologies do not stand still, and every hypermarket that respects its customers keeps in its assortment convenient containers for peat seedlings, which will not only not damage the root system young plant, but also simply dissolves in the soil. Why build your own cups when you can buy ready-made ones? The answer to this question is extremely simple. Experienced gardeners are accustomed to planting more than a dozen or even more than one hundred seeds of various vegetable and flower crops. Can you imagine how much it will take to invest in order to stock up on containers for all the seeds? Therefore, we will save and make peat cups for seedlings on our own. In the meantime, let's determine if there are any improvised materials that could become a container for seedlings.

Simple solutions from improvised materials

Even during the winter, gardeners collect plastic bottles, juice boxes, milk bags, and sour cream containers. Literally everything is used: from paper to a dense greenhouse film. And the fantasy of gardeners knows no bounds. The film is sewn together with threads, chopped off with a stapler, wound in several layers. There is another simplest way to design containers. Two-liter bottles of drinks are cut at the right height and turned into a container for planting. Plastic cups for seedlings, made in such a way in a simple way, have one small minus. Nevertheless, when transplanting, the root system will have to be disturbed a little. Painlessly, only the excavation of those plants that, during the time spent on the windowsill, did not have time to acquire long and strong roots, occurs.

Making paper cups for seedlings

Some plants are so capricious that they do not withstand transplantation, they get sick for a long time and do not take root well. As a result, while the seedling is acclimatizing in a new place, the precious time allotted for growth will be lost. Therefore, we will make cups for seedlings from paper. During the winter, you can collect unnecessary newspapers. Pressed pulp obtained from recycled materials is used for printing publications. It will easily rot in the garden, serving as food for omnivores.

We cut the newspapers into pieces of 10x30 cm. Newspaper sheets are quite thin, and in order for the process to go faster, you can fold them in half or three times. We take an ordinary glass and wrap it with the resulting blanks in several layers. We leave a small protrusion, which will later be needed to form the bottom. Now dip the bottom edge of the paper in a large number of glue and carefully crush, forming the bottom and firmly fixing it at the bottom of the glass. We press down the newspaper blank with a glass and let the glue dry. We repeat this simple manipulation as many times as we plan to receive blanks. Paper cups for seedlings are ready! Now they can be put away in the pantry until the sowing time.

Peat container for planting

If we are not sure about the density of newspaper sheets, then we can use more sophisticated technology manufacture of a landing tank. A peat cup will bring even more benefits to a painlessly transplanted plant. After all, it, dissolving in the soil, actually becomes a good fertilizer. You can make peat containers under your own order. We will determine the right dimensions cups and fit a conical steel billet under them. We take into account the fact that in order to obtain an earlier harvest, it is necessary to sow the seeds in a spacious spacious container. The root system will develop well in it, the transplant will be painless, and the plant will immediately be able to proceed to fruiting.

To make a peat cup for seedlings, we need:

steel conical shape of the required size;
blank for forming cups;
circle with rod.

The composition of the nutrient mixture

Having found all the components of the form for the design of future cups, we proceed to the manufacture of a peat base. We will need the following proportions: 50% peat, 40% cow manure and 10% black soil. Instead of black soil, you can use any other fatty soil. Mix well and add azotobacterin, phosphorobacterin and water to the composition. The mixture should be quite thick in consistency.

Responsible stage of production

To begin with, we lower a circle with a pin to the bottom of the steel glass and fill it with the prepared peat mixture to a thickness of 2 cm. We thoroughly tamp the future bottom with a blank. Now, without taking it out, we will fill the solution around the edges, filling the entire gap between the steel glass and the blank. A glass for seedlings will not dry out if the mixture is immediately carefully tamped when pouring. The blank can be immediately removed as soon as the peat composition fills the voids up to the very top. It is not scary if the liner is difficult to remove, it can be slightly rocked from side to side. Now it remains to carefully pull the rod and remove the finished glass.

Time for experiments

Not all peat cups for seedlings are of perfect quality the first time. Sometimes home-made containers are able to disintegrate and dry out - perhaps the point is the insufficient density of the mixture. Sometimes too dense and hard products are obtained, which are difficult to dissolve in the ground during planting. The necessary skill and flair will definitely come, even if it requires multiple repetitions.

Seedling pot made of polyethylene

To make a container with a height of 10 cm and a diameter of 7 cm, you will need a piece of dense film 33x15 cm in size. We find or cut out a rectangular bar to fit the size of the future cup. In two faces of the bar responsible for the bottom, we make grooves in such a way that a stapler is placed in them. We cut polyethylene blanks and proceed to the design of the landing container. Then we wrap the blank from the film around and fix it with a stapler and 5 staples. With two of them from above and below we fix the side face, and with the rest we form the bottom, folding the ends of the film with an envelope. It's okay if more staples go to the bottom. In this way, cups of various sizes can be modeled.

Conclusion

We learned a lot about how to make seedling cups. Of course, peat or paper containers are seen best solution compared to homemade polyethylene glasses. The idea of planting plants in the ground along with a natural glass that dissolves with water in the soil was revolutionary at one time. But it is up to gardeners to decide which of the presented methods for making containers for seedlings is the most acceptable for them. After all, not everyone will be able to find steel blanks for peat cups, and not everyone will have enough time and patience for painstaking work with glue and paper. Therefore, the manufacture of cups for seedlings is a purely individual matter.

Perhaps you will use the proven method and sow the seeds in disposable plastic containers, besides, they perfectly show the condition of the root system and the degree of soil shedding. Also, this container can be used multiple times. Whatever container you choose for sowing seeds, we wish you a rich harvest!

I always grow my own seedlings. I have a lot of it, so I have to save on glasses. I heard that you can use paper for this. Tell me how to make pots for seedlings from the newspaper with your own hands?

February for gardeners and flower growers is the beginning of a hot season. After all, now is the right time to start doing this. important business like growing seedlings. After acquiring seeds and a nutrient substrate, the question arises - where to sow them? The choice of containers for growing seedlings is simply huge: these are special trays, and, and disposable cups. However, everything requires financial investments. In the case when you need to get a large number of seedlings, the issue of cost savings plays an important role.

And here folk craftsmen come to the rescue with their ideas for using improvised means, such as newspapers. Convenient, practical and cheap cups can be obtained from paper material, since in every house there are unnecessary booklets, catalogs, etc. All that is required is old newspapers, a little time and patience. So, how to make pots for seedlings from the newspaper with your own hands?

Step-by-step instructions for preparing pots

First of all, newspapers should be folded (or cut) into strips of the required width, depending on the height of the future pot-glass. To do this, bend the sheet in half twice. The number of paper layers in a cup depends on the quality of the paper - a thin newspaper must be wrapped several times.

For paper cups, it's best not to use colored newspapers or glossy magazines, as they release dye when wet.

In addition, you will need a base for shaping the cup. For these purposes, you can use a glass cup or a tin can, but it is better to refuse it - it springs, and it will be inconvenient to wind the paper.

To prevent the cup from turning around, you can use two options to choose from:

at the stage when the newspaper is wound on the base, tie it with a thread;
before starting to wrap the paper around the base, fold the newspaper strip with a piping from the top edge, and when the cup is ready, unfold the piping a little on one side and overlap it on the second side.

Paper cups are not stable enough, so you need to choose a suitable container (2/3 higher than the height of the cups), and place them tightly next to each other. You can pull them with a rope after the soil is poured. It is important not to fill the seedlings in paper pots, otherwise they will quickly get wet and fall apart.

When transplanting seedlings, seedlings can be quite easily removed from the cup, or they can be planted with it - during the season the paper will have time to decompose in the ground.