To get a decent harvest, it is not necessary to use store-bought preparations. Often, effective fertilizer and medicine for plants can be made from substances available to every gardener. We tell you how to use milk and iodine to process tomatoes and cucumbers.
Useful qualities of the drug
The antiseptic iodine for tomatoes and cucumbers tends to act as a kind of panacea, repelling a mass of harmful microorganisms. It replaces nitrogen fertilizers that accumulate nitrates, working similarly to them and stimulating increased growth.
Solutions of the substance affect seedlings in an incredible way:
- Increases resistance to infections.
- They accumulate the necessary elements, together with vitamin C.
- Accelerate the ovary process.
- Guarantees nitrogen absorption.
- Disinfect the soil.
- Increases productivity and fruiting.
- Helps improve taste.
- Prevents harmful insects from settling in.
Benefits of iodine for plants
Several main properties why iodine is so useful when growing tomatoes, in addition to ensuring safety from diseases:
- Excellent feeding.
- Normalization of crop metabolism.
- Strengthening plant immunity.
- Improved development and fruiting.
- The appearance of additional ovaries.
- Increased yield.
- Acceleration of seedling survival in the soil.
- High quality of ripened fruits.
- An excellent replacement for nitrogen fertilizers.
Iodine as a fertilizer stimulates normal plant growth. This is achieved due to the potassium salts present in the composition of the product. Ripe tomatoes become tastier and stronger.
Important! It is easy to determine that plants lack iodine. The seedlings are fragile, weak, pale in color. The leaves on the bushes are limp or covered with brown dry spots. The stems are thin. Ovary formation is weak. The set fruits quickly fall off. Development stops or proceeds extremely slowly. Sudden changes in temperature can cause complete death of plants.
The seedlings are stretched out, the leaves develop poorly, the color is pale, the stem is inelastic, weak Source emtomat.ru
We process seeds and soil
Immediately before planting, the seed material must undergo the necessary purification. To do this, just one drop of iodine mixed in a liter of cold water is enough.
Place the seeds in a container, leave for about 10 minutes, then wash them using a running stream. After drying on any surface, you can start sowing.
You can disinfect the soil by treating the prepared beds with a solution containing 3 drops of antiseptic diluted in a bucket of water.
When the seedlings sprout, they need to be watered with the mixture: a drop of iodine per 3 liters of liquid. It is important to avoid getting the concentrate on the leaves or stems of seedlings.
Cucumber care
Plants are affected by powdery mildew, late blight, and root rot. If the ovary develops poorly, fertilizing measures are carried out. To do this, connect:
- water 10 l;
- milk 1 l;
- 30 drops of the main component.
Stand for 10 hours. The nutritional composition is used twice a month.
Implementation of treatment and preventive actions
Cucumber late blight is treated with iodine, diluted together with brilliant green in a ratio of 20:20 in a bucket of warm water. Seedlings should be sprayed every 10 days. Root rot is destroyed the moment the buds appear. The contents include up to 10 iodine drops per 10 liters of liquid.
If the leaves turn yellow, they are lubricated along with the stems with a solution of antiseptic and water in a ratio of 1:2 every day, reaching a height of 15 cm above the ground.
To get rid of powdery mildew, you will need 30 drops of the active substance diluted in a bucket of liquid + 1 liter serum + grated household soap.
Remember, any manipulation related to the drug should not be done more often than once every 10 days.
Why is iodine needed in greenhouses?
For gardening, greenhouse or gardening procedures, take ordinary pharmaceutical alcohol iodine (iodine solution). Bottles for storing this product are always in dark glass. The lid is additionally equipped with a dense cork plug made of durable polyethylene material. Considering that polyethylene is constantly in contact with iodine vapor inside the bottle, we conclude that the greenhouse must be made of a similar material. It is enough to build a structure from soft polyethylene so that iodine can be safely used in it.
Iodine - quick reference:
- color – reddish brown;
- smell – pungent, specific;
- evaporation is intense;
- composition 10 ml of 5% alcohol pharmaceutical product – 5 g. iodine, 2 gr. potassium iodide, 96% ethanol, pure water.
The reasons for using iodine in greenhouses are late blight. The porous microcellular structure of tomato leaves and stems allows us to obtain useful components even from moist air. Therefore, bottles with iodine solution are hung in greenhouses. Iodine vapor evaporates into the surrounding space, penetrating the soil, stems and leaves of plants. This measure is used to disinfect the space around crops, help them recover from late blight, or obtain an additional growth stimulator. The substance is also used as a spray mist on the affected bushes.
Bottles with iodine solution hung around the perimeter of the greenhouse are an antiseptic Source avatars.mds.yandex.net
Types of tomato diseases that iodine saves from:
- late blight;
- brown spot;
- root rot;
- mosaic.
Any fungal pathogens multiply very quickly in a humid and warm environment. The greenhouse creates all these conditions. Additionally, problems in the form of the rapid spread of fungal diseases are added by violations of agrotechnical conditions - too thick planting of seedlings. If you do nothing at the first signs of damage to tomatoes, you can quickly lose your bushes, and, as a result, your long-awaited harvest.
One of the reasons for the rapid spread of the fungus is dense planting of seedlings Source pro-dachu.com
Activities for feeding tomatoes
Tomatoes respond especially gratefully to the use of affordable medical medicine. This is additional nutrition and fights fungi, as well as a function that can accelerate the ripening of fruits.
To the question of how to feed diseased tomatoes with iodine, there are effective answers representing root and extra-root feeding. The first case requires watering under the root by combining 1 drop of iodine with 3 liters of water.
The procedure is carried out three times:
- when the second true leaf germinates;
- ovaries of the carpal system;
- during the full fruiting season.
When feeding tomatoes with iodine, the soil must be moist to prevent burns and facilitate the absorption of beneficial elements.
The following rules must be followed:
- Use warm, settled water.
- The substance should not get on the leaves.
- Exposure is carried out in the morning or evening.
- Discard it if cold weather begins.
External root disinfection is carried out with iodine for tomatoes and cucumbers by spraying. The ovary of the brush requires coverage with the composition of only leaves: 5 drops of the substance + a glass of milk + a liter of liquid
The constituent ingredients stimulate growth rates, destroy pathogenic microbes, and significantly enrich the immune system.
Ways to use iodine in greenhouses
Hanging in bottles or jars for disinfection must be organized according to all the rules. Despite the benefits of the substance, its excessive concentration can, on the contrary, harm the plant. The composition for bottles is used in the same concentration as in the manufacture of the composition for spraying plants. In addition to bottles, some people soak tea bags in iodine liquid and hang them in a greenhouse - 1 bag per 1 square meter. m.
Note! Iodine is not compatible with polycarbonate, from which greenhouses are made. If iodine compounds are used year after year in the treatment of plants or disinfection inside the greenhouse, then the polycarbonate quickly ages, first becomes hard like stone, and then brittle, cracks and crumbles. It is better to hang iodine in bottles for greenhouses made of polyethylene or other materials that are least destroyed by iodine vapor.
Spraying or root feeding should be done in the morning, before the sun begins to get very hot. Despite the fact that tomatoes grow indoors, the heat of the sun can also burn stems that have been exposed to water in the root zone. The same applies to microscopic droplets formed on the leaves after spraying diluted iodine. The best option is to alternate both options, water and spray alternately. Then the plants will evenly receive both feeding and protection from pest diseases.
Spraying with a spray bottle is a convenient way of careful processing Source 7ogorod.ru
Resistance to late blight of tomatoes
The combination of milk, iodine and water for tomatoes is the best treatment for treating this disease. The mixture includes:
- 10 drops of antiseptic;
- 10 liters of liquid;
- liter of low-fat milk.
Spraying is carried out only once every 14 days. The microelement is involved in the development of tomatoes, capturing metabolic, respiratory, photosynthetic processes, and the synthesis of amino acids.
A lack of iodine in tomatoes immediately affects their appearance; it does not affect the environment or human health, but only has benefits, enriching the fruit with valuable content and improving its taste.
The usual medicine is the most effective and cheapest way to save gardeners’ harvest.
Rules for using iodine
Tips for hanging iodine solution bottles:
- Having hung them at the beginning of summer, you need to remove the bottles from time to time and thoroughly ventilate the greenhouse.
- The density of hanging bottles is 6 pcs. for 8 sq. m.
- Recommended placement is around the perimeter.
- The composition is regularly added to the bottles after it has evaporated.
- Staying for a long time inside a closed greenhouse where bottles of iodine are hung is dangerous to human health. First you need to ventilate the greenhouse, then enter it and carry out work there.
- A solution of 10 ml of iodine and 1 liter of water (consumption 1-3 liters per 10 sq. m) is used to treat greenhouses before planting tomatoes.
- Greenhouses are best treated against late blight when the air warms up to +10℃
Experienced gardeners and summer residents do not allow high concentrations of iodine fumes inside greenhouses. Such precautions are resorted to in order to preserve the integrity of both the plants and the material of the greenhouse building. In 5-6 years, a brand new polycarbonate greenhouse, inside of which iodine vapors were often used for tomatoes, will become completely unusable. The material will become hard and crack.
Polycarbonate greenhouses are not suitable for iodine prophylaxis and treatment of tomatoes Source factinteres.ru
