The nursery means cultivating seedlings. The original meaning is to cultivate seedlings in nurseries, hotbeds, or greenhouses for transplanting to the ground for planting. And it can also refer to the stage in which various organisms undergo artificial protection until they can survive independently. Nursery is a labor-intensive, time-consuming, and highly technical job.
Different ways of raising seedlings
Traditional way
In the past, most people used traditional open-field live broadcast methods or sun-borders, improved sun-borders, and solar greenhouses to raise seedlings. Due to the poor equipment and the influence of natural conditions, nursery seedlings are long in age, they have poor quality and uneven size. There are often short of seedlings due to natural disasters such as freezing damage or pests.
Traditional seedling raising techniques only rely on experience, and there are many technical mistakes, especially it is difficult to master and promote seedling raising based on experience alone.
Modern way
Nowadays, we recommend the use of a centralized seedling transplanting method. This method means that we should use a nursery seeding machine to accomplish it, then the farmers will choose a spacious space and concentrate on raising seedlings.
Benefits of centralized seedling
- It is convenient for people to manage centralized seedling cultivation in the early stage, especially for pest control.
2. After nursery and planting, the seedlings will not slow down and the plants will grow neatly.
3. The nutrient formula of the substrate used for nursery is reasonable, the cultivated seedlings are strong, the root system is developed, the growth is fast, the flower bud differentiation is good, the yield is increased and it can be on the market early.
4. The special substrate for seedling cultivation is non-pathogenic and non-toxic, which reduces the occurrence of soil-borne diseases.
5. Plastic plate seedlings are easy to transport, saving labor, time, and labor.
Nursery seeding machine
The emergence of the tray planter has brought a lot of convenience to migrant workers. It is a new type of seedling raising machine. Compared with the traditional seedling raising method, this kind of seeding machine has great advantages, which you can not imagine.
1. The time-saving, labor-saving, mechanized production efficiency of plug seedlings has been improved. The plug seeder adopts both seeding and seedling formation, which realizes automatic control of a series of operations from substrate mixing, packaging board to seeding and covering, which is different from conventional seedlings.
2. Plug seedling can save energy, seeds, and seedling field. The plug planter uses dry seeds for direct seeding, one seed at a time, and concentrated seedlings.
3. The cost of raising seedlings is low. After using plugs, the overall cost can be reduced by 30% to 50%.
4. No slow seedling stage, using plug seedlings, strong resistance, no root damage, no slow seedling stage, plug seedlings are also easy to transplant, high survival rate.
5. Suitable for long-distance transportation. Plug seedlings are based on lightweight substrates and soilless materials as the seedling substrates. They have the characteristics of lightweight, strong water retention capacity, and are not easy to disperse. They are suitable for long-distance transportation, suitable for mechanized transplanting, and broaden the vegetable market.
6. The seedlings in each tray are relatively independent, which not only reduces the spread of pests and diseases but also reduces the nutritional competition between the seedlings.
Nursery facilities
1. Selection of seedling site
The nursery site should be located in a place with convenient transportation, flat, open land, and no water left. And the place should have a water source and power source, and the environmental conditions of the nursery site must meet the requirements of pollution-free production. At the same time, it meets the need to build seedling sheds and other facilities according to the scale of seedlings.
2. Basic facilities
The nursery shed adopts a standard steel frame shed, if economic conditions do not allow it, a bamboo frame shed can also be used. The size of the nursery shed can be adjusted according to the nursery scale. According to the weather conditions and seedlings, the process needs to choose the plastic film and sunshade net to cover the seedling shed. Greenhouse covering materials mainly include film, sunshade nets, insect-proof nets, etc.
3. Clean the seedling trays
The used plugs may be infected with residual pathogenic bacteria and insect eggs, so they must be cleaned and disinfected. So the method is to remove the residual substrate in the seedling tray, rinse it with clean water, dry it, and then disinfect it. And the sterilized plug tray must be thoroughly washed with water and dried before use.