Comfort or stress, which is better for tomatoes

I understood the answer to this question only this season. How do we usually handle seedlings? According to circumstances! What's the best? I propose to judge together.

Stress first. They say he's useful.

How to stress seedlings

Superfluous because these types of stress can be avoided.

• Reduce watering to prevent seedlings from overgrowing
• Make hardening hard, both temperature and light (before burns)
• Eliminate fertilizers for rapidly growing seedlings, or vice versa, apply an excess of fertilizers so that tomatoes cannot assimilate them
• Organize "dark" in a cool place, full of darkness, so that the seedlings do not stretch out, but freeze for a week

There is no gardener who does not do anything from this list to slow down the growth of seedlings or simply harden them.

At the same time, for some reason we feel sorry for our seedlings, but why, if we are doing everything right?

Excessive comfort can give us fattening useless tomato bushes. And excess stress postpones the crop indefinitely if the bush survives it.

I think we should try to organize the comfort of the tomatoes. With thoughtful little stresses. Then there will be maximum benefit.

Maria C. asked in her comment: “Has anyone ever gotten a crop in 75 days? If so, from which strain? I haven’t succeeded yet, only 96 days. And on some sachets they write greyhound - harvest in 75-80 days ".

I hope you can share your results.

After this question, I finally realized that it is the extra stress that deprives us of an early harvest. Superfluous, because there is ...

Good stress

1. Supplementary lighting seedlings with phytolamps - stress, but it increases the yield and accelerates the onset of fruiting.

1. Soft hardening helps plants develop defense mechanisms against inevitable temperature extremes, from bright sunlight. I will write about the light separately.

1. Transshipment in a larger volume of soil and for permanent residence - stress, but also new food. After transplanting, the plants are always shaded so that stress does not overlap with stress. “Tomatoes love picking” is the first thing I've heard about the benefits of stress for tomatoes.

Anything useful can be easily turned into harmful. We are especially often mischievous with light hardening.

At night we will cover with two layers of thin agrospan, during the day we will open it, while the nights are cold, + 7 ° С. If there is less, you can add a covering material.

Schedule and comfort

The puzzles were formed after Alexander Lee's comment: "The shoots will appear as soon as the potatoes feel comfortable, and not strictly on schedule."

Thanks to this thought about the schedule and comfort, I thought about transplanting tomatoes for permanent residence. If they feel comfortable, the stress is minimal, they will not lose color, they will not slow down, even overgrown seedlings will delight. Then we will wait for the tomatoes within the time indicated on the package.

Therefore, I decided this season to allow the seedlings to adapt in cups in the garden where they will grow. If this is not possible, there will still be a harvest, a little (or a lot) later.

Last year, a friend asked me to shelter a meter-long seedlings of Cherry Paints. There was no extra time, I dug it as best I could on a warm bed. I deepened half of it. Lucky with the weather, it was cloudy and warm for a long time. Tomatic adapted well, did not shed a single flower, and then pleased with the earliest harvest. I planted my tomatoes much later. So much for the price of comfort.

Very interesting, what is your experience with organizing the stress and comfort of tomatoes?

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