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Every gardener dreams of growing a rich harvest of environmentally friendly tomatoes on his plot. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to avoid the use of chemicals for feeding, treating plants from diseases and pests. The range of chemical protection products for tomatoes is growing every year. There are many copper-containing preparations among them.
Many vegetable growers with extensive experience in growing tomatoes in open and protected ground prefer tomato processing copper sulfate from late blight. These are necessary measures, especially if tomatoes are grown in a greenhouse. It's not a secret for anyone that air humidity is difficult to regulate, so there is plenty of space for phytophthora breeding.
What is copper sulfate
Copper sulfate is a substance of inorganic origin. In chemistry, it is called the copper sulfate salt. If you open the package with the substance, you can see blue crystals. Dissolving in water, they paint it in a sky-blue color.
You can buy copper sulfate at specialized or hardware stores. Packaging can be plastic or in a bottle. Packing from 100 grams to 500. Store the substance in a dry, dark room. Otherwise, it will lose its properties.
It is widely used in agricultural technology for growing vegetables and fruits in small household farms and large agricultural enterprises, both as fertilizer and as a means of treating premises, soil and plants from various pests and diseases.
Dissolved crystals have fungicidal, insecticidal and antiseptic properties. In addition, copper is essential for the development of plants as a fertilizer.
Infections, including late blight, most often affect plants with reduced immunity. Tomatoes will not give the desired harvest, and the taste of the fruit will decrease.
In what cases do they resort to copper sulfate
In no case should you deal with the processing of tomatoes with copper sulfate without assessing the condition of the soil and plants.
It often happens that the soil on the site contains a minimum amount of humus or there is too much sand in it. Plants do not receive the necessary nutrition, weaken, and cannot resist diseases and pests.
If the purpose of processing tomatoes is to increase soil fertility, then dry copper sulfate is mixed with the soil before digging. It is best to perform such work annually in the fall. One gram of crystalline substance is enough for one square meter.
Experienced vegetable growers do not often resort to the use of copper sulfate for treating tomatoes against late blight. After all, they competently use crop rotation, plant green manures on the site.
A blue solution of copper is used for spraying with foliar feeding of tomatoes. Copper starvation can be identified by whitish spots on the tops, weak shoot growth or dying off. Such tomato processing copper sulfate is carried out in early July. One gram of blue crystals is dissolved in a ten-liter bucket.
If you ignore the instructions and add more copper sulfate, you can burn the plants. The leaves will turn black, and the tomatoes themselves will either die or their growth will slow down significantly. When processing tomatoes with a solution of copper sulfate of a lower concentration, you will not get the expected result.
Breeding rules
Before you start processing tomatoes with copper sulfate, you need to carefully read the instructions. From this substance, compositions with different percentages of vitriol can be prepared. To prepare the mother liquor, take 100 grams of blue crystals and one liter of warm water. After dissolving the copper, the volume of the liquid is adjusted to 10 liters. This will be a 1% copper sulfate solution. To get 2%, you need 200 grams per 10 liters of water, and so on.
Most often, Bordeaux liquid is prepared for processing tomatoes. And now about how to dilute copper sulfate for processing tomatoes.
Step-by-step recommendations:
- For breeding, it is better to use plastic dishes. First, a one-hundred-gram package of vitriol is dissolved in a small amount of warm water. When the blue crystals are completely dissolved, the amount of water is adjusted to five liters.
- Put 150-200 grams of lime in another plastic bucket and add 5 liters of water. The result is a white liquid that resembles milk. The mixture must be mixed well.
- Pour the blue solution of copper sulfate in a thin stream into the milk of lime.
Be careful: it is copper sulfate in lime, and not vice versa.
- The solution must be constantly mixed. The result is a cloudy suspension.
How to prepare Bordeaux liquid:
You can check the acidity of the resulting solution using an ordinary metal nail. It is immersed in liquid for 3 minutes.
If the copper has not settled on it (there are no rusty spots), then the solution is not too acidic, just what you need.
The resulting one percent solution Bordeaux liquid processed tomatoes from late blight. It doesn't take long to prepare the Bordeaux mixture.
But the solution cannot be stored, it quickly loses its properties. It needs to be used in 5-9 hours.
After processing, an impermeable film forms on the tops of tomatoes. At first, it does not let in sunlight. But then the film disappears, and the danger of late blight spreading decreases.
Features of processing tomatoes from late blight
Copper sulfate is an excellent remedy for the destruction of late blight spores on tomatoes. There are other copper-containing preparations that can be purchased off-the-shelf. For example, Tsineb, Bordeaux mixture.
Copper itself is a heavy metal. When ingested, a person in pure form can cause severe poisoning. As for copper sulfate, plants do not absorb it, which means that the fruits are safe. A solution of vitriol, falling on foliage, stems, fruits, remains on their surface. Wash tomatoes well before eating.
Tomatoes are treated with late blight with copper sulfate three times during the growing season. Not only when the disease begins to progress, but as a preventive measure. Many gardeners with experience in growing tomatoes have become convinced of the benefits of vitriol in practice. They believe that this is one of the best means for combating fungal spores harmlessly for humans.
Prevention is important
According to gardeners, there is no need to wait for the outbreak of an epidemic. Any disease is easier to prevent than to cure. The focus of late blight does not have to be in your area. Disputes can come from shoes, clothes. Moreover, they are easily carried by the wind from the neighboring garden.
The first treatment of tomatoes in soil with copper sulfate from late blight is essentially preventive.And if you noticed small specks on the leaves or shoots of tomatoes, as they say, God himself ordered the processing. Moreover, it is not always possible to use crop rotation due to small land plots.
The first stage of the struggle
You need to start processing tomatoes before sowing tomato seeds for seedlings. Containers for sowing seeds, soil are treated with a solution of copper sulfate. For this, a 3% solution of copper sulfate is prepared. This preventive measure is aimed at preventing the disease. In addition to late blight spores, the causative agents of the black leg also die. This means that the seedlings will be protected at first.
Second phase
When 2-3 true leaves appear on the plants, the time for picking comes. Typically, new seedling containers and soil will be required. If the cups are new, and the soil was purchased at the store, you do not need to process them.
But most often vegetable growers use self-prepared soil mixtures. Plastic cups, as a rule, are also not thrown away after last year's plantings, they are reused. Despite the fact that after planting the seedlings, the containers are washed, over the summer, late blight spores can settle on them.
24 hours before picking tomatoes, containers and soil must be treated with a solution of copper sulfate in order to protect the seedlings from possible infection with late blight. But the concentration of the solution of copper sulfate should be one percent. The fact is that the seedlings still have very delicate root hairs, they can suffer from a strong solution. Tomatoes may not die, but they will slow down growth until the root system grows.
Stage Three
Regardless of whether late blight hosted on your site last year or not, preventive measures still need to be taken. You will also need a third root treatment of tomatoes from late blight before planting seedlings in open ground or a greenhouse. Wells are prepared per day and filled with a 1% solution of copper sulfate. Such a concentration will be enough, because before that, tomatoes have already been rooted twice.
It will take a lot of blue liquid, because one liter of copper sulfate must be poured into each well for the prevention of late blight. The solution is prepared just before processing.
After filling the wells with a solution of copper sulfate, fill them with soil, add compost or humus and leave in this form until the next day. After 24 hours, tomatoes can be planted in the treated wells. Agrotechnics of work from the cultivation of the land with vitriol does not change.
Root treatment of tomatoes from late blight with copper sulfate ends there. But foliar processing must be carried out in order to consolidate the defenses of the plants. It is timed to the time of the appearance of the first ovaries. At this time, late blight begins to activate, so protection of green stems and leaves from the penetration of disease spores is required.
For spraying, a weak concentration of Bordeaux liquid is used, about 0.1-0.2%. A stronger solution will be aggressive. Instead of the desired protective film, burns may develop on the leaves. The tissues will begin to die off, the plants will have to spend energy on healing, and not on flowering, fruit setting. Naturally, the yield of your beds will drop dramatically.
Greenhouse processing with copper sulfate
Copper sulfate can be used to treat late blight tomatoes fearlessly, because they do not form poisonous compounds. Copper ions are present in the soil in small quantities, freely combine with water. An excess amount of copper in the soil is also not allowed. Therefore, the treatment of soil with a solution of copper sulfate must be approached with caution. As we have already noted, the land in the beds and in the greenhouse should be cultivated no more than once every five years.
spring-cleaning
If we restrict ourselves to root and foliar treatment of tomato seedlings with a solution of copper sulfate, it is not always possible to avoid an outbreak of late blight. The fact is that spores of fungal plant diseases are very tenacious. They calmly endure any frost both in the open field and in the greenhouse. Indoors, spores have more space to hide: any cracks, cracks in the frame of the greenhouse and in wooden beds. Therefore, a general cleaning is required.
Preparation for planting tomatoes in spring should be started in autumn. If a standard greenhouse is made of polycarbonate, after harvesting, removing the stems and tops of tomatoes from the site, it is necessary to thoroughly wash the entire surface with hot water with the addition of any detergents. Using a brush, clean the cracks, joints: it is in them that the spores of the fungus can hide.
If the frame of the greenhouse is made of wooden planks, and the frames are glass, we first carry out the same general cleaning. Some vegetable growers use a sulfur stick for processing. In this case, you must not enter the greenhouse for three days.
After that, you need to steam the greenhouse with boiling water. There are different options. You can spill the surface and frame from a spray bottle or put boiling water tanks and close the greenhouse for several hours. Only after the preparation has been carried out, you can start processing the greenhouse from late blight with copper sulfate.
If, for some reason, they did not carry out a thorough cleaning in the greenhouse in the fall, it's okay. It can be done in the spring a month before planting tomatoes.
Processing rules
Copper sulfate treatment of the greenhouse surface is especially necessary if there are a lot of pests in it. In other cases, this is a preventive measure. Before spraying the copper sulfate solution, the greenhouse and the soil are treated with bleach for four hours. Up to 600 grams are added to a ten-liter bucket.
After that, they start spraying. For the surface treatment of the greenhouse, 2% Bordeaux liquid is prepared. This treatment can be carried out in autumn and spring.
How can you use a solution of copper sulfate:
How to treat the soil
No one will dispute the fact that it is in the soil that pests, nematodes and disease spores are found. Therefore, tillage is necessary. It is also performed in the fall. You can treat heavily contaminated soil with a formalin solution (40%). You cannot enter the greenhouse for three days, then you need to ventilate the day. For spraying the greenhouse, a one percent solution of Bordeaux liquid is prepared. If the treatment is carried out in the spring, then a month before the plants are placed in the greenhouse.
To destroy not only late blight, but also powdery mildew, bacteriosis, tomato spots, calcium hydroxide is added to the Bordeaux mixture.
For cultivating the land in an ordinary garden bed, the composition of the copper sulfate solution is prepared identically.
Safety regulations
Since copper sulfate is a chemical substance, safety rules must be observed when working with it.
Let's talk about this:
- When breeding copper sulfate for processing tomatoes, use any dish, except metal.
- The finished solution is not subject to long-term storage. Already after nine hours, ego efficiency drops sharply, and after 24 hours it is zero.
- When processing tomatoes with a solution of copper sulfate against late blight, remove the animals.
- For spraying tomatoes, soil, greenhouse surfaces, it is better to use special sprayers.
- Use at least rubber gloves when handling the drug. Glasses and respiratory protection will not interfere.
- After completing the work, wash your hands, face, and other exposed parts of the body with warm water and soap.
- Keep sachets of copper sulfate out of the reach of children and animals.
Conclusion
If you want healthy tomatoes to grow in your greenhouse or in the open field and produce a large harvest of tasty healthy fruits, do not forget about processing the plants, the surface of the greenhouse and the soil to destroy late blight.
As a rule, vegetable growers use solutions containing copper sulfate for this purpose. It is an excellent assistant in feeding and processing tomatoes from late blight and other fungal diseases. But since it is a chemical, care must be taken when using it.
Do not forget about the dosage. The preparation of a solution of copper sulfate, Bordeaux or Burgundy liquid is unacceptable by eye. An overdose will negatively affect the condition of the tomatoes. A large amount of copper is also unacceptable for the soil.
Informative, thanks