by Growing your own cucumbers for the New Year’s table in your apartment is not difficult at all. The first thing you need to do is choose the right variety and sow the seeds in time. Further care for cucumbers grown on the windowsill is basically similar to the traditional one.
You can grow cucumbers in the winter in your apartment on a windowsill or on a loggia, if it is insulated and the temperature there does not drop below 17°C.
Preparing for sowing cucumbers
What points should you definitely pay attention to if you decide to grow cucumbers for the New Year on your windowsill:
1. Seeds of cucumbers
Not all varieties of cucumbers are suitable for growing on a windowsill in winter. Most often, early ripening cucumbers are planted – their fruits begin to ripen 35-50 days after the emergence of shoots.
In addition, there are no pollinating insects in the apartment, so for planting, choose cucumbers that do not require pollination – parthenocarpic hybrids, for example, Avans F1, Aprelskiy F1, Druzhnaya Semeyka F1, Zozulya F1 and others. Even without pollinators, they produce only female flowers – with ovaries.
For growing in an apartment, you can also use cucumber seeds specially bred for balconies and apartments. Their distinctive features are small leaves, short internodes, small, regular-shaped fruits that do not outgrow for a long time. Among them, the shortest ripening periods are: City cucumber F1, Makhaon F1, Balagan F1, Balcony miracle F1 and others.
2. Container for growing cucumbers in an apartment
Any container with a capacity of 3-5 liters per bush is suitable for growing cucumbers at home. The root system of cucumbers grows more in width than in depth, so choose wide containers, you can use balcony flower boxes. Before use, wash them with laundry soap and dry thoroughly.
3. Soil for cucumbers
To grow cucumbers on the windowsill, you can use purchased soil, or you can make it yourself.
If you prefer to buy a ready-made substrate, then take the soil intended for pumpkin crops or for indoor flowers. If you want to prepare the soil for planting cucumbers yourself, then take in equal quantities:
- garden soil,
- compost,
- sod
Mix all the components thoroughly, then add a small amount of river sand and wood ash. To destroy pathogenic microorganisms that may be in the prepared substrate, it must be disinfected before use. This can be done in several ways:
- Place the soil in a hot oven and bake it for 30-40 minutes.
- Water the soil with a weak solution of potassium permanganate (manganese).
- Pour boiling water over it.
During the disinfection process, not only harmful but also beneficial soil microflora dies. For its quickest restoration, add any EM preparation to the “clean” soil, for example, Baikal EM1. This should be done at least 7 days before sowing/planting cucumbers, so that the preparation begins to act and beneficial microorganisms have time to populate the soil.
When and how to plant cucumbers to harvest by the New Year
In order for cucumbers to grow in your apartment just in time for the New Year, you need to correctly calculate the time of their sowing. Under favorable conditions, cucumber shoots appear from the ground in about 4-6 days. If your seed packet says that fruiting occurs in 45-50 days, this means that this is how much time passes from the emergence of sprouts to the first fruits. Add another week – and it turns out that sowing cucumbers for the New Year’s table should be done in late October – early November.
Many summer residents soak cucumber seeds before planting and sow them already sprouted. In this case, shoots appear earlier, on the 2nd-3rd day.
How to sow cucumber seeds for growing on a window? This process is not much different from sowing seeds in open ground.
- Place a drainage layer on the bottom of a pre-prepared container.
- Add soil, leaving a little space to the top of the container. As the plant grows, add soil – this will help the plant develop its root system.
- Water the soil and wait until the water is completely absorbed. If the soil is damp, you can first sow the seeds and then spray the soil with a spray bottle to prevent them from being washed away.
- Place cucumber seeds into the soil to a depth of 1,5-2 cm and lightly sprinkle with soil. If there are many seeds, place them at a distance of 15-20 cm from each other. When the seedlings grow, remove the weaker plant. If the number of seeds is limited, leave a distance of 30-35 cm between them.
- To create greenhouse conditions, cover the container with transparent film or glass and place it in a warm place. For cucumber seeds to germinate, a temperature of 25-27°C is required.
- After the shoots appear, remove the film and place the container on a light windowsill. The optimum temperature for cucumber development is 18-25°C.
How to care for cucumbers
If sowing cucumbers for growing on a windowsill differs little from sowing for traditional cultivation, then caring for “home” cucumbers has its own characteristics.
1. Lighting
For normal development, cucumbers need a long daylight period, at least 12-15 hours of illumination per day. This duration can be achieved in winter using special phytolamps for illumination or regular LED lamps.
Place them above the seedlings at a distance of 20-40 cm from the tops and lift them up as the cucumbers grow. To increase the efficiency of the lamps, attach foil to the sides of the plants to reflect the light.
Set the cucumbers to “day”, for example, from 8 to 22 hours. To do this, turn on the lamps in the morning, at 8 o’clock, and then in the evening, when it begins to get dark in the room.
In addition to light, cucumbers also need warmth and no drafts. Cover the cucumber containers from cold air with foam plastic and insulate the frames if necessary, since the cold coming from the window can not only slow down the development of plants, but also completely destroy them.
2. Watering
Cucumbers are a moisture-loving crop. This is especially important to remember when growing them in dry air conditions: in autumn and winter, during the heating season, the humidity level in the room drops significantly. For this reason, spraying should be added to traditional watering, which is carried out in the morning.
Water cucumbers growing on the windowsill in the morning so that the soil has time to dry out by evening. Water for watering should be slightly warm or at room temperature. Cold water, as well as temperature changes, negatively affect the development of cucumbers.
While the plants are small, use a spray bottle or syringe to water them so that the stream of water does not expose the roots of the seedlings.
3. Feeding
Due to the small volume of soil, nutrients are used up very quickly, so cucumbers growing in an apartment need to be regularly fed.
First feeding is carried out 2 weeks after the first shoots appear. Its purpose is to help the seedlings build up green mass. For this, they need nitrogen. As a nitrogen fertilizer, you can use both mineral fertilizers (urea, ammonium nitrate) and organic ones – diluted mullein (1:10) or chicken manure (1:15).
Second feeding is introduced during flowering. Here cucumbers need to be given a complete mineral fertilizer, preferably with an increased dose of potassium, for example Fertika Universal or Agricola. You can also feed cucumbers at this time with wood ash: dilute 100 g of ash in 1 liter of water and water the soil with cucumbers with the solution.
The third top dressing is carried out during the ripening period of fruits. At this time, plants especially need phosphorus and potassium, so add superphosphate (20 g) and potassium sulfate (15 g) to the soil.
You can buy small packages of fertilizer for indoor plants and feed cucumbers with it. Make sure that the NPK fertilizer is in the proportion of 16:16:16, and the complex also contains microelements.
4. Formation of cucumbers
Another procedure that is necessary for cucumbers growing in an apartment is the formation of runners. Parthenocarpic cucumbers, unlike bee-pollinated varieties, are formed differently. They are not pinched to cause bushiness, but are led into one stem, tying it to a trellis as it grows. Only when the cucumber reaches the ceiling, remove the top. Also remove emerging runners, because they take away nutrients that should go to the development of the plant and the growth of fruits.
The lower part of the bush needs to be “blinded” for good ventilation – freed from excess green mass. To do this, remove all shoots and flowers that appear in the axils of the five lower leaves.
If you wish, even without a greenhouse or a garden, you can enjoy your own cucumbers all year round. We hope our advice will help you with this.
