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Experienced summer residents begin to think about sowing and planting on their plot of land even in winter. Gardeners with love and excitement get acquainted with literature and purchase seeds. After which they plant the seeds and eagerly await the germination, and then they rejoice at the first shoots and wait for the warmth when they can plant the seedlings in open ground.
Vegetable growers inspect their crops every day, and if they find any deviations, this brings a lot of grief and worry. Often, pimples appear on young leaves of pepper seedlings. The work will consider the main causes of the appearance of tubercles on leaves and the main measures for the care and prevention of seedlings.
Preparatory work
To obtain healthy and viable pepper seedlings, you need to take some time to prepare the soil and seed material. Experts advise using special soil, which is sold in stores. And if you are planning to take your land from a dacha or from a plot, then be sure to check that it is not after nightshade crops.
Good soil for growing pepper seedlings is considered to be the soil after carrots, garlic or onions. The soil after sowing green manure has good qualities; rye, rapeseed, and mustard are used as such crops; such plants enrich the soil with nitrogen fertilizers. Before sowing pepper seeds, the soil should be warmed up and enriched with compost or manure, and sand should be added to make it loose.
Important! Peppers love well-drained and structured soil; these properties are achieved using peat and ash.
Peppers are very susceptible to diseases, so disinfection is a must. To disinfect, the soil should be treated with boiling water and spilled with a solution of potassium permanganate.
You can steam the soil in several ways:
- steaming in a water bath for about 30 minutes;
- in the oven at a temperature of 70 degrees and above, about 40 minutes;
- pour a hot solution of potassium permanganate.
The soil can also be frozen; to do this, it must be taken out into the cold.
Seed material also needs to be prepared for sowing, since diseases can be contained either in the soil or in the seeds. The following measures and preparations are used to disinfect seeds:
- pack the seeds in a fabric bag and soak in a weak solution of potassium permanganate for 35 minutes;
- use of drugs - “baktofit” or “albit”;
- two spoons of wood ash are dissolved in a liter of water and a bag of seeds is placed there.
Pimples on seedlings
Gardeners are often concerned with the question: what are these tubercles on the leaves of peppers? A common cause of their occurrence is lack of light or waterlogging of the soil. To prevent the appearance of pimples, you need to reduce watering, conduct regular ventilation and provide access to sunlight.
Sometimes, the cause of pimples can be the appearance of spider mites on pepper leaves. When a mite appears, bubbles form on the leaf blades, and then a light web appears. The mite does not like waterlogging, so it quickly dies at elevated humidity levels.
The following drugs are also used to kill ticks:
- "Fitoverm";
- "Akarin";
- "Vermitek";
- "Sunmite."
These drugs contain substances that have a detrimental effect on mites, aphids and thrips. Indoor flowers can become carriers of mites, so when treating seedlings, you should also treat the flowers.
Important! When you get rid of pimples by moisturizing, you must not forget about the effects of sunlight, which can form spots on wet leaves.
Based on many years of observations, vegetable growers have developed the following reasons for the appearance of pimples on leaf blades:
- The presence of high soil moisture and lack of light. Such conditions cause the appearance of swelling of the leaf plates. To eliminate swelling, you need to move the seedlings to a brighter place and reduce watering.
- The presence of a mite can lead to the death of seedlings. The appearance of a mite on seedlings is easy to recognize; the main sign is the presence of cobwebs on the leaves and stems of the plant. In these cases, water the seedlings generously and cover with film for about three days; the mites die in such conditions without causing any harm to the seedlings.
- The presence of aphids or scale insects is due to the presence of sticky liquid on the leaves. If you touch the leaves and they stick to your fingers, then it is 100% aphids or scale insects. Each side of the plant should be inspected.
Symptoms and manifestations of the disease
Regular inspection of seedlings will help quickly identify the first signs of disease. Leaves should be checked on both sides for discoloration, spots, and deformation. If tubercles appear on the leaves, they need to be carefully examined with a magnifying glass.
By carefully examining the tubercles on the back of the leaf, you can see if there is any movement in them. Its presence indicates that the changes are formed as a result of insect infestation. Otherwise, the problem is caused by illness or physical factors.
Cobwebs and white blisters indicate spider mites. Green or cream active points are aphids, and brownish and passive ones are scale insects. Light spots on the leaves extending to the stems indicate the presence of thrips. Green or whitish capsules filled with water indicate swelling due to oedema.
Picking pepper seedlings
Pepper has a very fragile and sensitive root system, so it must be picked with extreme caution. The plant must be picked at the stage of formation of 2 leaves, while the roots are buried by approximately 50 millimeters. The seedlings appear two leaves approximately a month after sowing the seeds.
Before picking, you need to prepare a box or box into which the plants will be transplanted. The soil must be moistened; experts recommend replanting the seedlings in separate peat pots.
Peat pots provide convenience when planting seedlings in the ground. Moreover, the pots themselves provide additional fertilizer, which has a beneficial effect on the rooting of peppers.
When picking, it is better to take the seedling by the upper part of the plant and lower it into the prepared hole. The hole should provide enough space for the roots to be evenly distributed. Sprinkle earth on top and compact it a little.
After planting, the seedlings are watered until completely saturated; if the soil subsides, soil must be added.
Whitefly
A whitefly is an insect that looks like a regular moth. The length of the body is 1-2 mm, the wings and body are white. One adult can lay up to 280 eggs. The whitefly is dangerous at the adult stage, when it goes from eggs to the larval stage and begins to feed on plant sap. Leaves affected by whitefly begin to turn yellow, curl and fall off.
Chemical preparations for whiteflies:
- "Aktellik" refers to insecticides with enteric contact action. To process 10 m² you need 2 liters. water and 2 ml. drug;
- "Karbofos" is a systemic insecticide, used for garden and vegetable crops. To treat peppers against whiteflies, you will need 60 grams of the drug, 10 liters. water. The resulting solution is enough for 100 m².
Traditional methods for killing insects:
- treating plants with garlic infusion. To prepare you need 1 liter. water and 6 grams of chopped garlic. You need to stand for a day in a dark place, then strain and spray the plants with a spray bottle;
- tobacco infusion. Buy a pack of cigarettes, remove the tobacco from it, add a liter of hot water and leave for 5 days. Treat the plants every three days until the pest disappears completely.
Hardening off pepper seedlings
Hardening of pepper seedlings is carried out only during the period when the leaves have become dense. The air temperature when hardening pepper seedlings should be above 15 degrees Celsius. If the temperature is below this indicator, the seedlings will wither and die. Young seedlings are very demanding of heat and sun.
Young plants should be placed on a balcony or loggia only in sunny weather. During hardening, you should monitor watering and under no circumstances allow the soil to dry out.
Pest control measures
To kill aphids on pepper seedlings, use the following solutions:
- Add 20 grams of crushed soap and 20 grams of ammonia to two liters of water. The resulting solution should be watered over the seedlings.
- Use of chemicals:
- "Karbafos";
- "Fury";
- "Confidor";
- "Aktara".
The pest called the scale insect has a protective shield on its body surface, so to destroy it, first use a brush, with which it is shaken off the leaves of the seedlings. The brush must be moistened with alcohol or soap solution.
After this, chemical preparations such as Actellik and Fosbecid are used. These drugs are very effective in helping to get rid of the pest and should be used in accordance with the instructions supplied with them, treating them on the back side of the leaves.
And, of course, it should be noted that nothing better than preventative measures has been invented; it has long been clear that it is better to prevent than to lose some of the seedlings from diseases and pests.
For pepper seedlings, you need to create comfortable growing conditions, that is, develop the correct watering regime and carry out regular ventilation.
And also systematically loosen the soil and spray the seedlings with water from a spray bottle. To prevent scale insects from getting into your peppers, keep them away from your indoor plants.
The main thing is to make the correct diagnosis
It is worth noting that sweet pepper leaf oedema is not classified as a fungal or viral disease. If you make an incorrect diagnosis and spray a healthy crop with chemicals, this will cause considerable harm.
In order not to confuse dropsy with other diseases, it is worth studying its symptoms:
- the back side of the leaf plate becomes covered with pimples or dropsy;
- dots or spots of light green color appear on the stem;
- the shade of the green mass does not change;
- with severe damage, the stems and foliage curl.
Despite the progression of dropsy, the plant may continue to grow and appear completely healthy. It has been noticed that sometimes the growths affect only certain parts of the seedling.
The tubercles formed on the underside of the pepper leaf are quite dense to the touch. The swollen formations are somewhat similar to white mold. Although edema is not transferable from one crop to another, it poses a hidden danger to the plant. If nothing is done, this can lead to the death of the leaves, which eventually fall off and deprive the plant of nutrients. At the same time, some varieties of pepper are less susceptible to dropsy than others.
Usually, overwatered seedlings die quite quickly. The reason for this is the death of the root system.
Causes of oedema
Disturbance in the development of seedlings is caused by excess moisture or lack of lighting. Most often, such swelling is characteristic of greenhouse crops. Irregular watering of seedlings usually leads to the progression of pathology. Typically, gardeners allow the earthen ball to completely dry out or become dry. Then they over-hydrate the plants, which cannot handle so much moisture.
Swelling in nightshades is observed due to blockage of the ducts responsible for the evaporation of moisture from the leaves. It is in these places that water tubercles form.
The appearance of such growths can be caused by a sharp temperature change. For example, a farmer watered his seedlings abundantly, after which it suddenly became colder. As a result, the soil substrate became excessively cooled. In addition, the development of dropsy is also affected by the density of the bushes or lack of ventilation in the greenhouse. The appearance of such bubbles is relevant for specimens standing close to each other or located close to the backlight.
Important stages of growing peppers
Peppers are heat-loving plants and therefore when growing seedlings it is necessary to follow a number of agrotechnical practices:
- It is advisable to sow seedlings in early March;
- carrying out timely gentle picking, peppers do not tolerate damage to the root systems. Damage leads to the death of the seedling;
- carrying out regular spraying with water from a spray bottle;
- providing irrigation with warm water;
- maintaining optimal temperature conditions;
- thorough preparation of soil for sowing seeds;
- systematic loosening and fertilization;
- location of seedlings in places with access to sunlight.
Important! The inspection should be carried out every day, and if damage and deviations in development begin to appear on the plants, assistance must be provided to the plants immediately.
