Rules for growing tomatoes in Siberia and the best varieties for harsh conditions

For residents of a region with harsh climatic conditions, it is important to have vegetables from their own garden on the table, since they are organic products. But growing tomatoes in Siberia, like other garden crops, has its own characteristics. It can be adapted for planting a greenhouse, but for a large family it is difficult to place a sufficient amount of vegetable products in it.

It remains to cultivate tomatoes in the open field. There is a proven agrotechnical practice over the years, which should not be forgotten, having your own plot and living in an area where summer does not linger for long.

Features of the selection of a plot for tomatoes

Before you start planting tomatoes in open ground, you need to know the biological characteristics of the vegetable plant. Tomatoes are characterized by:

• exactingness to food, moisture;
• good growth and fruiting with sufficient light and high air temperatures;
• intolerance to even mild frosts.

It is known that if the air temperature drops to plus fifteen degrees, then the flowering of the plant will stop, and below ten heat, growth will slow down. But the selection of tomatoes has led to the emergence of varieties that tolerate frosts in minus one or two degrees. The resistance of tomatoes to low temperatures increases if the swollen seeds and seedlings have passed the hardening procedure.

A plot for growing tomatoes in the garden is chosen with highly fertile soil, sufficiently moist. It is better if the topography of the soil is slightly lowered, but it should not be swampy and not saline.

Biologists have established that the same crop should not be planted in the same place for several years in a row. After all, soil fatigue occurs due to the spread of harmful microorganisms in it, the excretion of metabolic products by the roots of the vegetable. But you need to alternate garden crops on the site competently. For tomatoes, precursors can be cucumbers, cabbage, melons.

Preparing soil and seeds for sowing

For planting tomatoes, the soil begins to be prepared in the fall. Large areas are plowed, and small ones are dug up. This takes into account the plowing depth, which depends on the thickness of the nutrient layer. The optimal indicator is a depth of 25-30 centimeters.. During plowing, organic and mineral fertilizers are embedded in depth. For tomatoes in the autumn, a complex of fertilizers is applied with the content of phosphorus and potassium.

In the spring, before planting, five hundred grams of humus, up to three grams of ammonium nitrate and potassium salt, up to eight grams of superphosphate are added to the holes.

To create moisture, snow is retained in the areas for tomatoes in winter, and melt water in spring.After freeing up space for growing tomatoes completely from snow, loosen the area with an iron rake or a harrow. The dense soil is also dug to a depth of fifteen centimeters and harrowed.

The preparation of tomato seeds, their preliminary processing and hardening, will allow you to get tomato harvests even in adverse weather conditions:

1. Vernalization of seeds is carried out by first soaking them in warm water for a day, changing the water every six hours. And as soon as they begin to hatch, they are transferred to a cool, dark room. There they remain until sowing.
2. Germinate the seed in moist moss, sawdust, or soft material such as layers of toilet paper. During the procedure, the air temperature in the room reaches twenty degrees Celsius and above. Pre-germinated tomato seeds are ready to be placed in seedling boxes.
3. Freezing tomato seeds begins by placing the swollen seeds in water at room temperature for twelve hours, then putting them on the snow. Chilling at low temperatures from zero to plus one degree, freeze at temperatures up to minus five degrees. Hardening of tomato seeds can be carried out with alternating high and low temperatures for a month. The planting material hardened in this way will give vegetable plants that can bear fruit in the open field and not be afraid of frost.
4. Placing tomato seeds in solutions, growth stimulants, will then allow you to give more flower ovaries and improve the quality of tomatoes.
5. Etching of the planting material is necessary so that the plants do not get sick during the growing season. Seeds are disinfected with a weak solution of potassium permanganate for twenty to thirty minutes, then washed and dried.

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All procedures for preparing seeds and soil are aimed at growing high-quality and healthy tomatoes in the Siberian region.

Getting strong seedlings

Growing tomatoes in the open field is impossible without seedlings. The optimal timing for planting vegetable seeds in a container with loose soil is mid or late March. The prepared planting material is embedded in the soil to a depth of one to two centimeters. After that, the soil is poured with warm water, the boxes are covered with plastic wrap and placed in rooms with an air temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. Daily planting of tomatoes is aired by removing the covering material. Water the soil as needed. As soon as the first sprouts of tomatoes appear, then:

• equip additional lighting with fluorescent lamps, suspended at a distance of five centimeters from the plants;
• reduce the air temperature to eight to fifteen degrees Celsius;
• monitor the humidity of the air and soil, maintaining it at 70 percent.

After the first two real leaves appear, tomato seedlings transplanted, dive into separate pots. A month before planting on garden beds, tomato seedlings are hardened, taking out into the air, first for several hours, then for a day.

Landing in open ground, care rules

Usually, sixty-day-old tomato seedlings are transferred to the beds when the threat of frost has gone and the soil has warmed up to ten degrees above zero. The tomato seedlings planted in May must be covered so that they do not freeze. Therefore, they use an inclined planting, covering the plants with earth. Within one or two days nothing will happen to the tomatoes, and after removing the soil, the tomato stems take a vertical position.

Many people use paper or cardboard caps as protection for tomato bushes. At the same time, their edges are sprinkled with earth so that the wind does not blow off the caps.

The arrangement of tomato seedlings is 60 x 60 or 70 x 70 centimeters. Correctly place the bushes of the plant at a distance of fifty centimeters from each other.Before planting, wood ash is added to the holes, from which the tomatoes receive phosphorus. The deepening of tomato seedlings occurs to the first true leaf. The planted vegetable bushes are watered with two to three liters of warm water under each stem. The care of tomatoes planted in open ground includes:

• timely, moderate watering of the bushes;
• alternation of dressings with mineral and organic substances in a fixed proportion;
• fertilizing once every two weeks;
• stalk formation and tying of indeterminate tomato varieties.

If tomato seedlings are planted in April in open ground, then arrange a bed, raising it above the level of the site. Manure is added to the holes, covering the top with last year's grass. Then the compost is spread out. Prepared holes measuring 30 x 30 centimeters are ready to receive tomato seedlings. After planting, tomato bushes are abundantly watered and mulched with straw or peat.

For the bed, a non-woven shelter is needed, which is arranged by placing a structure of wire frames on top of the bed. During the growing season of tomatoes, they are ventilated, raising the material during the day. Such plantings do not need watering and feeding - there is enough moisture and fertilizers in the soil. After warm, sunny weather is established, the material is removed, and the frame serves as a support for the tomato stems.

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The grown and harvested tomato crop is processed for the winter. Unripe fruits are put in boxes or baskets and kept in a dry and dark place until they are fully ripe.

Tomato varieties of Siberian selection

The best suited for outdoor cultivation are tomato varieties that are adapted to survive and bear fruit in the harsh conditions of Siberia. They differ from greenhouse plants in that they ripen a little later, for the most part they belong to undersized tomato species.

Among the early ripening varieties, Demidov tomatoes are distinguished by high yield, excellent taste. They bear fruit 100-110 days after seed germination. The tomato bush reaches a little over half a meter in height. By weight, the fruits reach one hundred to two hundred grams. Pink tomatoes are suitable for fresh consumption.

First fruits Snezhana tomato gives after 105 days. On a compact plant half a meter in height, medium-sized tomatoes grow, universal in food use.

It is known about the Barnaul canning variety that its fruits weighing three hundred grams are suitable for pickling and salting. And you can cook food within a hundred days after planting a vegetable.

A Siberian surprise is a vegetable that pleases with harvests of fruit clusters of ten kilograms per bush. The indeterminant requires competent care, the formation of a bush in three stems.

Among the large-fruited tomatoes are:

1. Tomato Abakan pink appreciated for the excellent taste and decorativeness of heart-shaped tomatoes of a light red color. Large tomatoes of a variety ripen in 115 days, weighing five hundred grams or more.
2. The Gigantic size of the fruit boasts the Dimensionless determinant.
3. For open ground, the Big Berdsky tomato is intended. The bush does not reach a height of a meter, but it can boast of the weight of fruits, of which many reach eight hundred grams.
4. The indeterminate Superbomb also has fruits weighing six hundred grams, and the height of a bush of one and a half meters requires pinching and garters.
5. Yellow tomatoes up to three hundred grams each are harvested from Samokhval tomato. In addition to high yield, the variety is noted for disease resistance.
6. Granny's secret gives tomatoes almost a kilogram in weight. Scarlet fruits are good both fresh and canned. They make fortified juices, tomato pastes and sauces.

Low-growing varieties of tomatoes are also appreciated for open ground in the Siberian region. Among the determinant species, the following are known and verified:

• Buffalo heart with a stem height of seventy centimeters and tomatoes per kilogram;
• Siberian heavyweight, with difficulty holding eight hundred grams of tomatoes on short stems sixty centimeters;
• variety Amber with small orange fruits, famous for their excellent taste, abundance in the clusters;
• Parsley is a gardener with elongated tomatoes, yielding from one square meter to twelve kilograms of fruit.

The achievements of the stations of Siberian selection allow the inhabitants of the northern latitudes to feast on a healthy vegetable product during the entire short summer and to procure canned food from grown tomatoes for the winter.