Growing cabbage seedlings at home

Cabbage is a vegetable often called the queen of the garden. This is easy to explain, as cabbage is a storehouse of vitamins and nutrients, and how many different dishes can be prepared from just one head of this green beauty? Not to mention, cabbage can be fermented without losing its beneficial properties.

But to ensure your body gets the most benefit from cabbage, it's important to grow and care for it properly. Step-by-step instructions How to grow cabbage seedlings At home, this will help you avoid making serious mistakes in this matter, as well as getting a ripe, rich, and highly beneficial harvest.

When to sow cabbage

Growing cabbage begins with planting dates. It's crucial to adhere to these dates. Planting seeds too early can ruin them, while delaying sowing them can lead to failure.

Cabbage seeds germinate fairly quickly, with results visible within five days of planting. Cabbage varieties are classified as early-ripening, late-ripening, and mid-season. However, before they sprout in the garden, they need some time to grow indoors. Early and late-ripening varieties require 50 days, while mid-season varieties require 30 to 40 days.

Early-ripening cabbage varieties are planted as seedlings in the middle of the first month of spring. Mid-season varieties are planted later, around the twenties of April. Until they are planted outdoors, the cabbage grows in small boxes on the windowsill; after that, it needs to be pricked out. In early May, you can create a cold frame to prepare the plants for transplanting into the open ground.

But what if cabbage variety If it's mid-season, it's planted in early April. However, any cabbage variety should only be pricked out when the first four true leaves appear.

What kind of soil is needed?

The second step in the step-by-step instructions for growing cabbage seedlings at home involves preparing the right soil for cabbage. The plant prefers fertile, neutral soil, and only that. To grow seedlings on a windowsill, mix peat moss, turf soil, and sand in equal proportions.

Advice! To make the soil safer, before planting the seeds, treat it with a weak solution of potassium permanganate.

How to prepare and plant seeds

To get good cabbage seedlings, you should give preference only to large seeds of the plant.
Before planting, large seeds should be wrapped in cheesecloth bags and placed in a jar of water heated to 50 degrees Celsius. Then, leave the seeds in this manner for 4 hours. After this time, remove the seeds from the cheesecloth bags, place them on a saucer, and refrigerate for 12 hours. This process hardens the plant and promotes rapid germination.

The seeds are planted in shallow trays filled with suitable soil. The top layer of soil should be leveled, furrowed, and lightly watered with a weak solution of potassium permanganate. The seeds are placed in the furrows to a depth of one centimeter and covered with soil. Next, the containers should be covered with plastic.

Until the first shoots appear, you can ventilate the boxes, but do not remove the film completely. If you follow these instructions, you should see the first shoots as early as 5 minutes after planting.

When the first cabbage shoots appear, the seedling trays should be moved to a cooler location. It's important that the cool spot be well-lit, as cabbage thrives in bright light. Also, the temperature in the cabbage's new location shouldn't exceed 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). Only under these conditions will the plant grow strong and develop quickly.

How to care for seedlings

How to grow cabbage seedlings at home: step-by-step instructions include plant care rules, without which you won't achieve positive results.

Without light, for example, cabbage will die. Therefore, it's best to choose the brightest spot in the house for your seedlings. Only after this is achieved can you move on.

During the first week of seedling growth, maintain a temperature of 18 to 20 degrees Celsius. In subsequent weeks, the temperature can be lowered to 14 degrees Celsius.

Cabbage doesn't like excessive watering, so it only needs it when the soil is completely dry. Watering should be stopped a week before transplanting the seedlings outdoors.

The seedlings need to be fed with mineral fertilizers twice: the first time after 7 days from the emergence of seedlings, the second time - 7 days before transplanting into open ground.

Step by step instructions on how to grow cabbage seedlings Growing cabbage at home is not much different from the instructions for growing other vegetables, but it does have its own nuances that shape the entire process. Only by following all these nuances will you be able to grow the true queen of all gardens—cabbage!