Now many allotment gardeners have started to prepare for the new season. They have bought well-tried seeds and are working at what will soon become seedlings. Some already have even sprouts.
What will happen next, when seedlings need to be transplanted to open ground?
And what if seedlings are transplanted not outdoor but in a greenhouse? In many regions of Russia the climate is not mild and warm, and therefore crops need to be protected from rapid changes in temperature. Hence, one more question: what greenhouse to choose?
If you use plastic films, you’ll get a lot of condensate on leaves and high humidity; plants will become sick, because the film does not “breathe”.
If you take polycarbonate for your greenhouse, you’ll soon realize that it is not only expensive but also difficult to use. You’ll have to use mild detergents throughout the season, and in winter remove regularly snow and ice build-up. The material is fragile and nondurable. No matter how much care you take of it, it gets muddy and cracks with time.
Naturally, we should mention the most monumental type of greenhouses – those made from glass. So, this luxury is even more expensive. However, it is as dubious as the two mentioned above. Glass is even more fragile and vulnerable than polycarbonate. It has high thermal conductivity, and due to this, heating has to be switched on during returning cold. Such greenhouses are difficult to assemble.
But you will not have such problems with unwoven covering material. It breathes and is air-permeable. Unwoven fabric safely keeps up the required microclimate and provides plants with scattered light, which is undoubtedly better than aggressive direct sunrays hitting delicate young leaves.
Today Agrotex offers a wide choice of materials of various density and colours. When making your choice, bear in mind the intended purpose: low density (17-30, 42 g/m²) is suitable for covering seedlings in open ground, while bigger density, for instance, 60-90 g/m² is meant for covering arcs, hotbeds and greenhouses. For covering greenhouses we also recommend reinforced laminated (waterproof) covering material and material with foiled stripes.
Also, in order to get the earliest and rich harvest, farmers and allotment gardeners can use the white and red Agrotex material (it speeds up growth) and the red and yellow material (it attracts pests to itself), which are put on arcs, as well as the two-colour mulch, which protects against weeds and pests and warms soil thoroughly in early spring.
All the advantages have been proven in practice. Together with farmers the company regularly conducts experiments in the course of which they keep a watch on the process of cultivating crops with the use of unwoven materials and without them on the same plot of land. Experiments are also conducted on our own test site in Toropets, where cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage and greenery are grown under different covers. Experiments are conducted every year, and every time we get a good harvest.
We’d like to share with you some experience of commercial growing of vegetables in a Moscow region farm. The picture shows a simple frame which the farmers built with their own hands and covered with the thick Agrotex’Prom 60. To be on the safe side, they even brought in hot air blowers, which never proved necessary. Seedlings took root perfectly well and gained in strength very early, and without additional heating.
