Tomato nursery management practices

Tomato staking method/ifarmkenya.co.ke

Raising health seedlings is the most important  practices especially in tomato farming.right from selecting the best tomato hybrid which does well in Kenyan soil,to mulching and disease and pest control practices are very crucial.here are simple steps you can follow to get health and vigorous tomato seedlings.
1.Select the best site area

• Make sure that the area selected  should be well drained, and free from water logging.

• Make sure there is  enough sunlight access,

• The nursery should be close to water area for regular easy watering.

2.Nursery bed preparationNursery bed should be prepared according to the season and crop.

• In the rainy season raised beds are prepared but in the winter and summer season flat beds should be prepared.

• If the seedlings are to be raised in boxes during unfavourable weather condition, the flower pots, polythene bags, potting plugs, wooden treys, earthen pots etc. may be used. Prepare soil mixture in the ratio of 1:1:1 of soil, sand and well rotten FYM/leaf mould etc. and fill the mixture in these seedlings raising structure. Arrangement should be made to drain excess water from these structures by making a hole in the bottom of all types of pots

Raised nursery beds

• Length of the bed may be kept 3 to 5 meter; however, width is restricted to 1 meter only which facilitates intercultural operations.

• The beds are raised 15 to 20 cm high from the ground level. A space of 30 - 40 cm is leaft in between two beds.

• The space between two beds helps in weeding, nursery care against diseases and insect pest and also for draining out the excess rain water from the nursery beds.

• The beds should be prepared in the east and west direction and line should be made from north to south direction on the beds.

Sowing tomato seeds in the nursery

• Lines are made 0.5 to 1.0 cm deep parallel to the width at an distance of 5.0 cm from the line and seeds are sown or placed singly at a distance of about 1.0 cm apart.

• Cover the seeds with well rotten and sieved FYM or leaf compost etc. (1:1:1). After the seed covering a light irrigation must be given.

• The nursery beds at this time requires light irrigation with the help of an irrigation can until all the seeds get germinated.

• Excess rainwater or irrigated water should be drained out from the field as and when it is required otherwise seedlings may die due to excess of water.

• Watering in the beds depends upon the weather condition. If temperature is high, open irrigation is applied. Need not to irrigate the beds during rainy days.

• It is an important operation to remove weak, unhealthy, diseased, insect pests damaged and dense plants from the nursery beds keeping distance of about 0.5 to 1.0 cm from plant to plant.

• The thinning facilitates balance light and air to each and every plant. It also helps in watching the diseased and insect pest attacked plants while moving around the nursery.

• Timely weeding in nursery is very important to get healthy seedling. If there are some weeds in the seed bed, remove them manually either by hand or by use of a small hand tool.

• Pre emergence herbicides can also be sprayed soon after seed sowing to control the weeds.

The most dangerous and terrible disease in the nursery is the Damping off disease

Signs:

• Pre-emergence death of seeds is seen.

• In first instance girdling takes place on the stem near base of the stem and seedlings bent down near the ground and die.

• The causal organisms are pythium, phytopthora, rhizoctonia and Fusarium fungi.

• Treat the nursery bed either by soil solarization, formalin solution or formalin dust or fungicides like rhedomil.

Leaf miner disease

After the seed bed preparation tomato seeds are sown in the nursery bed in lines.

This is the proper line sowing for tomato seedlings.

To maintain the soil moisture for seed germination cover the seed bed with a thin layer of mulch of paddy straw or sugar cane trash, or sarkanda or any organic mulch during hot weather and by plastic mulch (plastic sheet) in cool weather.

After 3-4 days,carefully remove the mulch to avoid any damage to emerging seedling as at this time they must be out.

NB: Always remove mulch in the evening hours to avoid harmful effect of bright sun on newly emerging seedlings

It is very small sized insect enter in the leaves from margin side and move from one place to other by eating the chlorophyll. Initially the infected part of the leaves become brown and later on dry.its mostly control using fungicide like rhedomil.

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