How to properly collect cucumber seeds at home with your own hands?
Not all gardeners buy new colorful bags for each season, because they know how to collect cucumber seeds at home. This process is not particularly difficult, but it has its own nuances.
No matter how you like the variety, you need to pay attention to whether it is not a hybrid, which is indicated by the letters F1 or F2. Even when it is possible to find seeds in such fruits, the cucumbers will not tie, and if they grow, they will lose their qualities. Excellent yield, disease resistance are preserved in hybrids for only one season.
Which fruit to choose?
Breeders develop crop varieties by crossing the best plants. Stable characteristics are obtained not in one year. This kind of work takes a long time. It is necessary to collect cucumber seeds from fruits, where there are 4 chambers, since female flowers are formed in them, on which an ovary is formed. Already after a season, a delicious harvest will ripen from seeds collected by yourself.
To prepare them, on the strongest bush, you must not pluck the largest fruits. You can mark these cucumbers with a ribbon, put something under the base, otherwise, if they hit the ground, they will rot if they charge the rains. So that the fruits do not interfere with the appearance of a new ovary, cucumbers should be left for seeds not at the beginning of the season, but at the end.
Hybrids are usually planted under the film, which are independently pollinated. Varietal plants in a closed greenhouse can be grown if bees fly into it, otherwise the fruits will not tie.
When to collect seeds?
In order to preserve the quality characteristics of the variety, the next year many fruits ripened on the bushes, delighting with bright green color, delicate taste, seed cucumbers are left on the whips until frost. The grains must survive not only the summer heat, but also the fall in temperature. After natural stratification, next year sprouts will sprout together, a lot of ovary is formed, on which cucumbers will tie.
These green fruits contain enzymes, thanks to which animal fats are absorbed faster. They contain vitamins, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and calcium. Fiber normalizes bowel function. Alkaline salts neutralize acids, prevent the conversion of carbohydrates into fats.
Seeds are selected when three conditions are combined:
- the fruit becomes brown;
- the cucumber becomes soft;
- the tail dries out.
From such grains, you can get the harvest for the next year. They will retain their properties for several seasons.
How to harvest cucumber seeds correctly?
In order for each grain to sprout in the spring, you need to know how to prepare them, and pay special attention to this process.Whether the quality characteristics of the variety will remain depends on how the cucumber seeds were harvested.
Having found a fruit with a square section:
- Cut it into 2 identical halves.
- The grains are taken out from the front.
- After cleaning the chamber, the seeds, along with the pulp, are placed in a glass made of plastic or glass, filling it by a third.
- If there is a lack of liquid, add water.
- The container is closed with gauze and sent to a warm place where fermentation should take place. Fermentation lasts from 24 hours to 3 days.
When a cucumber starts to rot, bacteria grows. To make them die, such a fruit is treated with a solution of copper sulfate.
After the grains are cleaned of pulp and shell, they are poured with water. Seeds that sprout will be at the bottom of the container, empty ones will float to the surface. The grains are subjected to this manipulation several times, after which they are washed again and transferred to the material. To make them dry better, you can put a cloth on a battery or place it near another heating device.
The seeds are packed in cloth bags or stored in paper bags at low temperatures in the dark for several years. In the first season, many male flowers will form on the bushes grown from these grains, there will be few fruits.
If you don't want to wait for the seeds to stand, they need to be warmed up for a couple of hours in the oven at 50 degrees. Cucumber seeds give the best inputs in the fourth year, they can be sown in the sixth, but not all will come out of the soil.
It is imperative to take into account that if, after fermentation, the husks of the collected seeds have not separated and dried, the sprouts will not sprout.
How to get seedlings?
In the southern regions, crop seeds are sent directly to open ground. Summer residents do not grow cucumbers in the fields, but in small areas. In order for the root to take root better, 1-2 grains are placed in each glass and pot of peat. Before disembarking:
- The seed bag is kept on the battery or in the sun for 14 days.
- To improve germination, the seeds are heated for two hours in a thermos.
- Put in a solution of potassium permanganate for 30 minutes.
- Rinse with running water.
After soaking, sprouts hatch on the third day. Seeds are placed on the surface of the ground, covered with soil with a layer of 15 ml. The soil is lightly sprayed, but not watered. In this way, prepare seedlings in each pot.
Tanks with seed grains are installed in boxes, which are moved to the window, or sent to the greenhouse, covered with plastic wrap. At 25 degrees of heat, the first shoots will not have to wait more than 3 days. When they appear, the air temperature must be reduced so that the cucumbers do not stretch. In cloudy weather, you need to turn on the fluorescent lamp so that the plant is not dark. Daylighting for seedlings must be organized for at least 10 hours a day.
The film is removed with the emergence of seedlings. When the first leaves are formed, water is poured into each pot. It is better to do this with a spoon, since excess moisture will only interfere with young bushes.
Transfer
3 weeks after sowing, 2 leaves appear, and the cucumbers can be sent to the garden. Then the roots will not get sick and will take root well. Before this, the land is fertilized with rotted manure and disinfected with a solution of potassium permanganate and Fitosporin.
Seedlings develop at a temperature of 16 degrees, with a cold snap, growth stops, therefore, it must be moved into the ground when the air warms up well. In the early days, it is advisable to cover the bushes with pine or spruce branches from the sun's rays. If you pick cucumber seeds correctly and take care of the plants, they will reward them with juicy and green fruits. Harvesting begins one and a half months after planting in the garden.
