Vegetable growing

Depending on the size of the site, vegetable-growing areas can be subdivided into kitchen gardens, vegetable gardens and truck fields.

Independently of the size of the plant, various systems of planting are used. Sometimes seedlings are planted into special holes. Just as in the case of field crops the seeds of vegetables are either thrown into the prepared beds broadcast or introduced into the ground by means of drills of which, depending on the kind of vegetable to be sown, there exist many different types; to mention just a few: carrot drills, cabbage drills, pea drills (sometimes with fertilizer placement), etc. For planting potatoes the checkrow or cluster-pocket method is sometimes applied. Very often ferti-seeding is used.

As the vegetables on the plantation grow, weeds will necessarily appear amidst them, while in many cases the plants sown will produce, too dense a growth stifling one another. Accordingly, weeding and thinning respectively become a vital necessity. These operations are at present also accomplished mechanically by weed extractors and mechanical thinners. Again, as the plant grows, it needs hilling with inthrowers, regular watering and dressing with additional fertilizers inducing better growth. If the leafage is exuberant, as in beets, top-removing is sometimes undertaken as a preliminary to taking in the crop. In the case of many truck crops, grown on a vast scale, harvesting is effected with the help of special harvesting machines, of which the potato-harvesting combine is best known.

All the aforesaid referred essentially to planting vegetables in open ground when the plant is open to the vagaries of the climate and notably to sudden frosts occurring even in springtide. But vegetables are in acute need on the market not only after the yield has been taken in, that is in summer and autumn, but also in early spring and winter. This want can be supplied by growing vegetables under glass, or even in heated premises: hothouses.

The use of glass in forcing vegetables greatly intensifies the work. Hot and cold frames are mainly used for the purpose of forcing vegetables in spring, but greenhouses (or hothouses) provided with heating batteries permit of winter cultivation even during the darkest and coldest months.

Now what vegetables are actually grown in hothouses?

Onions, parsley, celery, beetroot and cucumbers come first. These vegetables, along with heat, also receive, in the hothouses the necessary light as a potent stimulating factor, wherefore electric lighting is generally provided in greenhouses. Tomatoes are not so often cultivated in hothouses since their yield is by far less and they tend to ripen rather much later.

Hotbeds differ from coldbeds in the fact that the former are provided with a heating agent – “an organic fuel” - manure, which in decomposing liberates a definite amount of heat prevented from escaping by the glass frame.

The latest development in hothouse vegetable-growing is aeroponics - a trend which made its first appearance in the Russia. The greenhouse contains a number of racks to which reticular bags are attached; these bags contain the seedlings. The root system runs through the reticular texture of the bag and hangs out into the air. The outhanging roots are constantly humidified by nutrient solutions which are sprayed out of a pulverizer.

There is every ground to believe that aeroponics will in the near future enable automation to take care of vegetable-growing, while it may perhaps not be a dream to think of the time when spaceships sailing out into the Cosmos will have on board aeroponic conservatories to provide their pilots with fresh greenery.