Fertilizers For Cucumbers On The Windowsill: How To Feed Cucumbers On The Balcony At Home? Top Dressing For Fruiting, Folk Remedies And Ready-made Fertilizers

2024 Author: Beatrice Philips | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-18 12:09

Growing cucumbers at home is not an easy task. These plants require a lot of maintenance, in which feeding plays an important role. You should know how and what to feed the cucumbers cultivated in the apartment.

When do you need top dressing?

When growing cucumbers on a balcony or windowsill at home, do not forget about the importance of fertilizing them. This promotes their growth as well as the formation of fruits. Fertilizers for such plants are necessary already at the stage of planting seeds, then they need to be applied more regularly than for cucumbers growing in a greenhouse or on open ground. To explain this is quite simple: a plant planted, for example, in a pot, simply has nowhere to look for the nutrients that it needs due to the lack of large volumes of soil. There are several feeding periods:

• the first is carried out immediately after planting cucumbers;
• the second - before the formation of the first ovaries;
• the third - during fruiting.

When the first shoots begin to form, and full-fledged leaves are formed, the young plant must either be transplanted or dived. During this period, it is especially important to devote time to feeding cucumbers, which will significantly increase their ability to take root in these conditions and reduce the adaptation time. In addition, it is recommended to remove the pull, which will subsequently loosen all landings. Moreover, this should be taken into account if you are growing cucumbers without using additional lighting. Most often, gardeners who grow balcony cucumbers carry out top dressing at a certain frequency.

• 2 weeks after the formation of shoots, 10 g of urea and superphosphate are used per 3 liters of heated water. In this case, it will be enough to allocate 60 ml of solution for each bush.
• Re-feeding is carried out after 10 days. For it, 0.1 kg of urea and 10 liters of water are used. For each bush, 10 ml of the mixture is enough.
• After 10 days, another top dressing is carried out. For this, a solution is prepared from ash, nitrophoska and water.

Note that between the last two stages, you can add peat fertilization of the soil. This will help prevent acidification and improve the soil.

Fertilizers

At the present time, summer residents use both purchased fertilizers and folk fertilizers. However, in any case, the fertilizing agent must be prepared strictly according to the recipe so as not to harm the plant. The solution should not have a high percentage of concentration, and therefore, before using it, it must be diluted with water . In the worst case, there is a risk of causing great damage to the root system of cucumbers.

Ready-made purchased

Complex fertilizers are distinguished by their efficiency and at the same time are safe. This applies to both liquid formulations and dry mixtures. Besides at the present time, there are many organic and mineral complex fertilizers on the market, which are intended just for apartment plantings.

The big advantage of such fertilizers is that, unlike natural folk remedies, they are thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, which eliminates the risk of contamination of cucumbers with mold or fungi.

For home cucumbers, top dressing is best with names such as Barrier, Breadwinner, and Rossa . Note that the concentration of these solutions can be adjusted to suit your plant, depending on the purpose for which you plan to apply them and in what period. In addition, ready-made, diluted urea can be used. Before that, bring this component to the required concentration level.

Folk remedies

Do-it-yourself homemade solutions are environmentally friendly and economical. Their main plus is that they are completely free of chemicals. They are based on a combination of organic and mineral elements.

For cucumbers that grow in a garden or in a greenhouse, summer residents actively use mullein, horse manure or compost, however, these fertilizers are completely unsuitable for use in an apartment . Below we will talk about fertilizers that can and should be used for cucumbers at home.

So, for feeding a plant, which is grown in a balcony environment, you can use the peel from a banana. It contains such important elements as magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen and calcium. A banana peel-based solution promotes the active growth of the plant and its fruiting. You will need:

• chopped peel of 4 bananas;
• 3 liters of heated water.

All this should be well infused, which will take about 3 days. After that, the mixture is thoroughly filtered and used for root watering. Note that if you use this solution for a very young plant, then its concentration must be halved by adding water. In this way, even very young seedlings can be fed.

Top dressing, which is based on eggshells, is also considered effective. You will need:

• shells from 4 eggs, which must be grated in advance;
• 3 liters of warm water.

It is necessary to water the plant with a solution every 7 days . In addition, the eggshell is also suitable as another layer of drainage for the bottom of the bowl or box, where the growing plantings are located. It will need to be changed once a year. The big plus of the eggshell is that it contains a large amount of calcium, which dissolves easily. In view of this, the substance necessary for the plant can enter the water during the recirculation process.

It is worth paying attention to such a simple top dressing as sweet water. It will contribute to an increase in the growth activity of cucumbers and allow the fruits to form juicy, elastic, crispy and, most importantly, healthy.

The recipe for this solution is simple: in a liter of water, you need to dilute a teaspoon of sugar or glucose, which can be purchased at any pharmacy . In the case of the second substance, it is worth noting that it has a greater concentration than simple sugar, and therefore a gram of glucose is quite enough for a liter of water. It is necessary to feed the plant with such a solution at intervals of a week.

Pay attention to feeding the plants with ash. She will be able to fully supply your home plants with potassium. The ash-based solution can be used both for watering and for spraying the plant.

For foliar processing, 0.1 kg of ash and a liter of water are required. All this must be mixed and allowed to brew for 5–6 days, after which you need to add a little grated laundry soap and dilute the solution with water in a ratio of 1 to 3 . After that, you can spray with a spray gun at intervals of 10 days. For watering it is recommended to use the same solution, but without adding soap and dilution, wipe off with water.

You should not ignore such a component for solutions as yeast. For a solution based on them, you will need:

• 0, 1 kg of yeast for baking, diluted in a preheated liquid;
• 2.5 liters of water;
• 0, 15 kg of sugar.

All components must be thoroughly mixed and placed in a warm place, stirring the composition from time to time. Top dressing will be ready when the fermentation process is complete . After that, it can be used by diluting a glass of the finished mixture in 10 liters of water. For each planting, a liter of such a solution is enough.

The mixture can also be prepared with fresh yeast . To do this, you need a kilogram of this component and 5 liters of heated water. All this must be mixed and left in a warm place for a good tincture for at least a day. In this case, please note that the temperature in the room should be around + 25 °. For effectiveness, you can wrap a jar of solution with a warm blanket. After tincture, the solution can be used by first mixing it with water in a ratio of 1 to 10 - a liter of fertilizer and 10 liters of water. For each bush, you must use a liter of solution.

Application rules

There are rules for fertilizing.

For seedlings

Cucumber seedlings need to be given special attention, since if it lacks one or another nutrient, then this will definitely affect the fruits of the plant. So, potassium deficiency will affect the ovaries, nitrogen deficiency deforms the fruits, due to which they will be cone-shaped, the lack of calcium will lead to the death of the ovaries.

Both foliar and root dressings are introduced for seedlings . At the same time, keep in mind that it is necessary to apply top dressing at the root only when the plant has permanent leaves, indicating the normal development of the root system. The procedure for root application of fertilizers is carried out in the evening, while before the procedure it is necessary to supply the plant with a large amount of moisture.

Foliar fertilization should be applied when it is difficult for the roots to absorb minerals from the soil . This can be observed especially in winter due to cold, damp and cloudy conditions. Basically, foliar feeding is carried out during the period of the appearance of ovaries. For the procedure, it is necessary to adjust the spray bottle so that it finely disperses the fertilizing, evenly distributing it over the plant. In this case, the spray solution must be at a low concentration, otherwise there is a risk of burning the leaves. Please note that fertilization of seedlings should take place at a temperature of + 8– + 10 °.

For adult plants

Adult plants that are ready to bear fruit also need nutrients. Due to the fact that homemade cucumbers grow in artificial conditions that do not give them the necessary amount of sunlight and soil , from which you can take whatever is required, they may begin to fade, or their fruiting activity will noticeably decrease.

By using regular feeding, you will enrich your plant with nutrients and you will most likely get a large and tasty harvest.

Adult cucumbers, by analogy with seedlings, also require root and foliar feeding . However, you cannot overfeed them. This is especially true of mineral fertilizers, since they contain chemicals that are harmful to humans if they are in excess. It is necessary to apply fertilizers to such plants depending on their condition. By tracking it, you can feed your cucumbers in a balanced way, avoiding both overabundance and scarcity.

Recommendations

All those who are beginners in terms of growing cucumbers at home need to know certain features

• Do not neglect feeding . Without them, cucumbers will in any case wither, and their flowers and ovaries will fall off. In this case, you will definitely not wait for the harvest.
• Track planting status . So, for example, if you notice an unnatural color of the leaves of the seedlings, then this indicates an overabundance of minerals.
• Do not use additional fertilizers, as this can harm the plant . Observe the measure.