What can be grown in the Urals on an industrial scale?

Spring is coming, and therefore thoughts about the upcoming work in the garden and vegetable garden appear. Let us remember about vegetables, a little has already been said about the Ural fruits.

In the Urals zone, more than seventy vegetable crops were grown on collective farms, state farms, agricultural enterprises and in individual gardens. And their number continues to grow. Here is a list of vegetables that have been grown in the garden. There were about twenty of them. Maybe about a dozen other vegetables grew in neighboring gardens and state farm gardens. This means that thirty - thirty-five vegetable crops were grown in the fifties in the Urals. Two times less than today.

The number of vegetables that grew in the gardens of the Ural residents, when the new settlers staged a roar, cutting down the forest for arable land on the very land where our gardens now stand, was even smaller.

And what vegetables were the first to come to the Urals and the Urals, when?

In the Stone Age, tens of thousands of years ago, primitive people collected and eaten, as additives to animal meat, fruits, roots and leaves of wild plants, such as onions, garlic, carrots, sorrel, beans. And once, perhaps by accident, and perhaps deliberately, he sowed the seeds of these plants near his home. Shoots have appeared. And now he did not have to go somewhere far away into the mountains or into the valleys for an onion or a pod. They were there. So gradually wild edible plants moved to vegetable gardens and became cultivated. They were later called vegetables.

Crop plots near the dwelling were fenced off with poles, palisades or fences to protect them from damage by livestock. And the word “vegetable garden” came into circulation. Later, with the development of arable farming, only vegetables were grown in the gardens.

But its semantic meaning the word vegetable goes back to the word grow, plant. And now we call vegetables juicy, fleshy tubers, roots, rhizomes, stems, shoots, leaves, flowers, fruits, unripe plant seeds. They are consumed and cooked raw or cooked.

Peas are one of the most ancient vegetable crops. Man began to cultivate it in the territory of Asia Minor in the Stone Age, 5-7 millennia ago, together with wheat and barley. Around the same time, the cultivated bow appeared in the mountains of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Garlic, dill, radishes and radishes, turnips, carrots, beets, cucumbers came to the gardens for him. At the turn of our era in the Mediterranean, ancient vegetable growers developed cabbage from collard greens, which quickly spread in Western and Eastern Europe and became the main vegetable plant. Cabbage was brought to Kievan Rus from Transcaucasia around the 11th century. At the same time, turnip came to us from Ancient Greece, followed by beets.

In the X-XIII centuries, in Kievan Rus, in the Smolensk region, in the Novgorod land, they were engaged in vegetable growing everywhere. Turnips and radishes, carrots and beets, peas and beans, onions and garlic, celery, dill, poppy seeds, mint, savory, anise, peppers, hops, later cucumbers and pumpkin were grown in the gardens, which formed part of the estate, courtyard, courtyard. ... Separately, cabbage was planted in the field and those places were called skits.

The ability to grow vegetables was highly prized. The princes and boyars kept in their service gardeners, experienced masters of growing vegetables.A lot of cabbage and hops were cultivated. With these crops, the peasants paid off according to the natural quitrent. Hops were also sold abroad, to other countries, along with furs and honey.

There are two types of vegetable growing, differing in a peculiar way of vegetable crops and agricultural technology of their cultivation: European, which includes ancient Slavic vegetable growing, and Asian, including the Chinese type.

Ural vegetable growing was characterized by features of the European, Old Slavic type. This suggests that it came here not from the east, not from China, but from the west, from Drovnya Rus. The aborigines of the Urals did not know vegetable crops and did not engage in gardening. The history of the Ural vegetable growing is closely connected with the history of the Ural arable farming.

The first vegetables appeared in the Cis-Urals in the XII-XIII centuries. in. together with the Novgorodians - the Khlynovites, who founded the Vyatka Republic, and in the Urals itself, in the Trans-Urals in the 15th - 18th centuries, together with Russian settlers.

He donated 4.5 tithes, which a peasant or a servant received from the Stroganovs in the 16th century, consisted of a courtyard, a vegetable garden and a field. From four to 20 acres were allotted for a vegetable garden, in the old way - from 100 to 500 square fathoms. Peas, hops and other vegetables were sown on it, and cabbage was sown on a cabbage vegetable garden.

According to the census of the Dvortsovaya Osinskaya Sloboda with its villages for 1596, it is said that from the suburb of the Wasp down the Kama River to Belaya and up to Lysva, hop is taken from quitrent, that is, it is grown for calculations on rent and taxes. In the 17th century handwritten medical book, compiled in the Kama region, hops and also melon, mustard, turnip, cabbage, poppy are also mentioned. This means that the population of the Cis-Urals already knew these crops well, cultivated and consumed them for nutrition and for treatment even before the 17th century. In Tagil Sloboda, in Verkhoturye and other large villages of the mining industry in the Urals, there were vegetable gardens behind each courtyard. Large vegetable gardens appeared at monasteries.

The eighteenth century was the heyday of the Ural vegetable growing. For personal consumption, vegetables were grown both by peasants and mining workers. Peasant gardens were also the main source of vegetables for the service people of factory settlements and cities. Marketable vegetable growing appeared, that is, growing vegetables not only for oneself, but also for marketing, for sale on the market.

In large villages of the Kama region, cabbage was the main cash crop. On fertile floodplain soils, she gave high yields. But cabbage forks were grown then small, up to two kilograms in weight. Perhaps it was more convenient. A lot of cucumbers were cultivated in Perm, Kungur and surrounding villages. They were sold fresh and salted. And not expensive. For a barrel of pickled cucumbers - a thousand pieces - they asked for one and a half rubles.

In both workers and peasant families, vegetables in the garden were the concern of women.

Vegetable crops, rare for the Urals, grew on the beds of the townspeople: parsley, parsnips, celery, chicory, watercress, mustard, horseradish, radish. In early spring, seedlings of cucumbers, pumpkins and cabbage were sown. In June, cucumber and pumpkin seedlings were transferred to open manure beds, which were made very tall. They sowed a lot of carrots. It was used as a substitute for Chinese tea. They grew onions. Radish, peas and turnips were popular.

Academician I. I. Lepekhin, who traveled around the Urals in the 18th century, saw vegetable gardens in the villages of Tatars, Udmurts, Mari, Permian Komi, where they planted the same vegetable plants as those of the Russians. The Bashkirs did not have vegetable gardens. At that time, they still roamed the southern Ural steppes.

In the 17th century, vegetable growing came to the Trans-Urals, to the Kurgan and Tyumen districts. It developed especially widely in the villages along the Iset River. In addition to the traditional well-known vegetables, sunflowers, poppies, rutabaga also grew here in the gardens, and in Shadrinsk they ripened among lovers of melons and watermelons.

And yet the list of Ural vegetables was small.Even at the end of the 19th century, in villages remote from cities and large villages, residents had no idea about many garden vegetables. And for those that were sown, they did not know how to properly care for vegetables. Vegetables died from the return cold and snow, suffered from excess moisture in the spring and early summer, and at the end of summer deteriorated from early frosts. They have never heard of any scientific agricultural technology here.

In the vicinity of Yekaterinburg, the center of the mining industry in the Urals, in the villages of Shartash, Gorny Shchit and Uktus, gardening was carried out in the most primitive manner. The cabbage nursery was built in an ancient way, on high poles or stands in the wind. The cracks in the boards were not buried. A layer of cold manure up to three vershoks thick was placed on the bottom, a layer of frozen earth up to two vershoks was placed on top of it, and seeds were thrown into this unheated soil. They were not sown in grooves, they were not buried in the soil, but simply spat out of their mouths onto the ground.

This "agrotechnical" technique came here with the first settlers and has not changed at all for half a thousand years. The seedlings were watered in the morning and in the evening, and they came out small and frail. In June, without watering the soil, the seedlings were pulled out in bunches, breaking off the root lobes, and carried away to the field. When planting, the holes were not made, but with their hands they dug in the earth around the sprout with a tubercle, which made the roots dry out and the plant developed poorly or completely died.

For decades, cabbage has been planted in the same field. And, quite understandably, they could not get a good harvest on the depleted land. They said: "If they get ugly, it's good, and if they don't get ugly, there's nothing to be done." In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ural market was filled with imported vegetables, and local vegetable growing fell into decay and did not develop.

It was revived only in the Soviet era, already on a completely different economic basis - on collective and state farms.

The share of imported greenhouse vegetables in Russia is about 70% in the sales volume. Its quality is poor; Russian cucumbers and tomatoes are much tastier, cause less concern, and are in great demand among buyers. Sanctions, rising import prices forced retailers to turn their face to domestic producers. The absence of large greenhouse complexes gives a chance for the development of small businesses.

The consumption of greenhouse vegetables for each resident of Russia is about 11 kg per year. Of these, 4 kg are domestic products, and 7 kg are imported from abroad. In the last 10 - 15 years, more of them have been bought, which is facilitated by the fashion for "healthy eating" and the approach to Western living standards. Therefore, the Russian greenhouse business is experiencing a rebirth.

In 2012, the State Program for the Development of Crop Production for 2013-2020 was adopted. It included the allocation of large-scale subsidies for the greenhouse industry: up to 50% for equipment, and up to 30% compensation for electricity costs during the operation period until 2020. At the beginning of its introduction, there were only about 2,000 hectares of greenhouses in Russia, most of which required reconstruction (for comparison: in the Netherlands - 10,000 hectares).

This caused a boom in interest among large agricultural holdings, retailers and investors. Sberbank, Gazprombank, Vladimir Potanin, Abramovich Jr., Mikhail Fridman and many others have invested. Over the past two years, construction has begun on greenhouse complexes with an area of about 600 hectares, and several large distribution centers. However, government money does not come in regularly, and the initial costs are very high. The payback period of projects is 7-10 years.

While business giants are "swinging" and dividing government money, small and medium-sized producers are slowly occupying a niche that is being freed from imports. Let us consider in more detail the components of successful production of vegetables in greenhouses. A greenhouse as a business is profitable if an entrepreneur:

studied local demand well and found a permanent distribution channel;
uses modern designs and agricultural techniques;
solved the problem of energy intensity, which makes the business profitable.

Vegetable demand and consumer preferences

Due to the harsh Russian climate, even residents of the southern regions receive vegetables "from the garden" for a maximum of 5 months, and for the rest they are available for 2 - 3 months a year. A customer survey by FDFgroup, conducted in Moscow in the summer of 2015, showed that residents of the capital buy fresh vegetables:

at least once a month - about 90%;
more often than once a week - about 60%;
buy occasionally - only 8% of respondents.

At the same time, cucumbers and onions are regularly purchased by about 60%, tomatoes - by about 56%, cabbage and greens - by 50% of buyers. And in winter, of course, these are only vegetables grown in greenhouses. According to the study, last year they were bought less than in 2014, which is undoubtedly due to higher prices. The prevailing places of purchase are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Places of purchase of fresh vegetables in% of the number of respondents.

Interestingly, the quality of goods is assessed differently: 94% of satisfied customers in the market, in supermarkets - 81%, and in ordinary stores - 77%. At the same time, the lowest indicators for quality and assortment are in the large chain stores "Magnit" and "Pyaterochka". Reason: imported goods - tasteless solid vegetables and fruits pumped with special solutions, mostly from Turkey. But now they too have come under sanctions. By the way, both of these retailers have begun to build their own greenhouses.

Cucumbers and greens are in constant demand, and these are the simplest crops for production, including for small businesses. The situation is more complicated with tomatoes. However, the demand for them is growing, and the lion's share of them was imported from abroad (Fig. 2). Therefore, the transition to growing tomatoes has good prospects.

Figure 2. Structure of imports of fresh tomatoes in physical terms.

How modern greenhouse production works

The main task of the greenhouse is to create an artificial microclimate for growing vegetables all year round. This is much more costly than outdoor production. Bulky glass-covered metal structures with obsolete traditional heating systems are no longer competitive. A modern greenhouse structure is determined by the following parameters.

Frame construction

Most greenhouses are a standard width gallery that can usually be extended in length. Roofs are gable, single-pitched or cylindrical. The frames are mounted from wooden arched structures impregnated with an antiseptic, with nail pressing; from a metal pipe, galvanized steel profile. Their service life is up to 25 years. They are installed on a foundation, piles, and sometimes just on the surface. Doors, transoms, vents, racks, and less often partitions are provided.

Figure 3. Polycarbonate gable industrial greenhouses. The area is 2 hectares, the length of utilities is 2.5 km. Farm Devdariani, South Ural.

Coating material quality

Glass was replaced by film coatings and polycarbonate. Polyethylene film is an affordable material, but its service life is up to 3 years. It perfectly transmits sunlight, thanks to which the greenhouse warms up well on sunny days. But the nighttime temperature drop causes moisture condensation, which increases humidity, contributes to plant disease. Multilayer pimple-air films of the new generation are devoid of these shortcomings. Cellular polycarbonate is a lightweight, durable, plastic material that can withstand up to 100 kg / m2, resistant to wind and hail. The cost is significantly higher than that of the film. It withstands winter temperatures down to minus 50 °, has good thermal insulation properties. Today it is the leader among greenhouse coverings.

Heating system efficiency

This is the most expensive part of the technological process. The share of expenses for heating air, soil, water is over 40% in the cost of production.And the total energy consumption, taking into account supplementary lighting in winter, ventilation in summer, reaches 60%. This is the main reason holding back the development of greenhouse production. The annual growth in gas and electricity prices is approaching 15%, and in just the last ten years, energy prices have more than doubled. For example, when growing the most profitable crop: cucumber, electricity costs when using conventional fluorescent tubes for winter lighting are 2 times higher than the cost of the lamps themselves, and are comparable to a major overhaul (replacement) of the entire lighting system.

Reduce energy consumption in all available ways, using energy-saving technologies; double wall cladding, material combinations, heat shields, active soil substrates that generate heat during decomposition (linseed fire). Many entrepreneurs build their own boiler houses with tanks, buy autonomous thermal power plants.

This is where small businesses outperform large greenhouses. It is one thing to heat 5-10 greenhouses on 20 acres, and completely different scales of energy consumption on areas of 2 hectares and more. For example, Russian craftsmen, to preserve heat, bury structures in the ground, sometimes to a meter depth; reducing the height, reducing the cost of covering walls, heating, use simple stoves, stoves, heating them with available local raw materials. To this must be added a variety of "know-how" in terms of creating heating systems of your own design and methods of connecting to household power networks (especially in household plots).

Entrepreneurs Viktor and Valentina Stolyarov from the village of Krasnoe, Tver Region, first grew vegetable seedlings in greenhouses, and now - roses. The flower business turned out to be more profitable. Despite the fact that a gas pipeline is connected to the site, the greenhouse is heated with firewood. It is more economical, albeit more labor intensive.

Climate control automation

The guaranteed yield depends on adherence to temperature and humidity conditions. This is provided by irrigation systems, humidification, evaporative cooling, curtain screens. In addition, the drainage system of internal drains, the supply of solutions of fertilizers and pesticides is being developed. Ventilation is often natural, through a system of vents. All this is monitored by an automatic control sensor system. Let us give, for example, the average set of equipment for one greenhouse (Table 1).

1.	Industrial greenhouse "Farmer 7.5": width - 7.5 m, length - 12.7 m, height - 3.9 m assembled with polycarbonate	248 000
2.	Drip irrigation system for soil substrate	13 900
3.	Air humidification and cooling system	9 730
4.	Automated feeding and fertilizing line	8 700
5.	Controller and sensor kit for monitoring temperature and humidity	3 500
	Total, incl. 14% auxiliary equipment:	283 830

Modern agricultural technology

First of all, it includes the selection of crops, quality seeds, modern soil substrates. The use of the seedling method speeds up the process by 2-3 weeks, facilitates care, and increases efficiency. On one square meter of the greenhouse, 3-4 different vegetables can be grown throughout the year, depending on the season and demand. This requires constant fertilization and control over the composition of the soil, knowledge of agricultural technology, at the same time, allowing you to use the area to the maximum.

Most common crop: cucumbers. Their average yield is 22-35 kg / m2. They are followed by greens: onions, dill, parsley, lettuce and radishes. But tomatoes are grown much less often. Despite the high prices and good yields, they are more capricious and take longer to grow. Peppers, eggplants are practically not grown in small farms. It is believed that they are profitable only in industrial plants (from 20 hectares). However, below is an example that suggests otherwise.

Khakassia, Krasnoyarsk Territory.Farmer Nikolai Kutukov organized a profitable greenhouse business, starting from scratch in 2010, building the first greenhouse on his own. At first I grew only green onions, gradually switched to other crops. Now he has five greenhouses, he grows cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants. Sells products through local shops and markets. The area is remote, there are no large competitors nearby, so the entrepreneur plans to expand the economy.

The most painful question for small businesses: finding a distribution channel. It all depends on local conditions. In the center and south of Russia, many small producers prefer to sell their crops to wholesalers. The latter process, pack it in their own distribution centers, and resell it to retailers. Sometimes it is more profitable to open your own store (pavilion) if there is a demand and a target audience.

The profitability of greenhouse production

According to Aslan Devdariani, who has been developing the greenhouse business for more than 10 years, the greenhouse must provide a profitability of at least 20% for production to be profitable. He grows only cucumbers, supplying them to the nearby city of Orsk, the area of greenhouses is 2 hectares. It is unprofitable to carry on. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Agroinvestproekt has an average operating profitability of industrial greenhouse complexes in central Russia of 30-40%.

However, let us give an example of production on a personal plot in a small industrial city. Ilya Odintsov grows all the same cucumbers. With an average yield of 10 - 15 kg per 1 sq. M. (and it can be increased to 25 kg), he gets about 1,000 rubles in two months, selling them to wholesalers at a price of 80 rubles per 1 kg. He has 10 greenhouses with an area of 40 sq. M. each one. In total, in a good season, revenue reaches 400 thousand, net income - 200 thousand rubles. By the way, in February-March, cucumbers are sold in stores for 180-200 rubles.

conclusions

There are more chances for the success of the greenhouse business in those areas where there are no industrial complexes, and the lack of vegetables is compensated for by imports.
More profitable is production near an urban settlement, especially an industrial one, where the subsidiary farm itself is underdeveloped.
The main task is to minimize energy costs; agronomic knowledge and special skills are required.
The longer the period of use of the greenhouse, the more profitable it is. For example, growing cucumbers, herbs in February - March; radishes, seedlings - in May; then - early tomatoes.

text and photo - from the company "Gardens of Russia"

The Sady Rossii company is known throughout the country as a leader in the market for mailing quality seeds and seedlings.
From year to year, the company offers gardeners and flower growers a wide range of popular and new varieties of all kinds of plants. But few people know that it is located in the Russian outback - in the village of Shibanovo, Chelyabinsk region.

A successful enterprise cannot be created and systematically developed without competent and wise leadership, without focusing on modern realities. The founder of the Sady Rossii company, its permanent leader and ideological inspirer is Vladimir Vasilyevich Stepanov.
Recently, the general director of Sady Rossii, Vladimir Stepanov, was awarded the distinction "For services to the Chelyabinsk region."

On the picture:
1 - Vladimir Vasilievich Stepanov;
2 - from left to right: Chairman of the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk Region Vladimir Myakush, General Director of Sady Rossii Vladimir Stepanov, Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevich at the award ceremony.

About how Gardens of Russia began, which allowed the company to take a leading position, what principles the manager should adhere to to achieve the success of the enterprise, about plans for the future - in an interview with General Director Vladimir Stepanov.

Chernozem in the South Urals is as powerful as in the Kuban

– Vladimir Vasilievich, how did you create such a powerful gardening company?

- The company was conceived for a very long time, in 1978. But in Soviet times, one could only think about the commercial direction without speaking out loud. The realization of the idea of professional gardening began 25 years ago, in the Sverdlovsk region. Then a family cooperative was created, and we started supplying amateur gardeners with planting material by mail, that is, catalog trade. The very first season of mailing gave in response 15 bags of letters with applications, the desire to develop their business grew stronger. But due to the colossal inflation in the 90s, we had to take a break.
I started working on the Chelyabinsk land in 2001. Together with my friend and assistant Valentin Cheremisin, we arrived in an old ambulance UAZ car to the abandoned village of Shibanovo, on the shore of Lake Myrkai (30 km from Chelyabinsk). Apart from this UAZ and the dilapidated garden house, there was nothing. We packed seeds for 4 years, delivered them to the surrounding villages and towns.
My childhood passed in the Chelyabinsk region. Our family came from the Far East. I lived here before going to college. Relatives live here. And yet, there are very good lands here. For example, in the region of Magnitogorsk, the thickness of chernozem reaches 1.6 m - as in the Kuban. In general, it turned out that I settled in the South Urals, and this turned out to be the most suitable place for making my dreams come true.

Maximalist in life and work

– Why are the products of Sady Rossii so in demand?

- Our company is entirely built on non-standard solutions. For example, all competing firms work on a prepaid basis, and we work with cash on delivery, payment upon receipt of the parcel. Competitors charge a fee for a complete set, an insurance fund, something else ... Our approach is completely opposite: no prepayment, no insurance fee, no postage. Very favorable conditions are obtained, and the price of percent is 60 percent lower than that of competitors.
And one more thing: gardeners and florists buy exactly our products, because they know about the desire of "Gardens of Russia" for high quality. Quality is the strong point of our company, which we will never give up. The seeds sold must be some of the best or the best in the world. It's the same with seedlings. I am a maximalist in life, an excellent student, I graduated with honors from the institute. I motivate all employees of the company that we should be the best and the first!

– Vladimir Vasilievich, where are your seeds grown?

- Our divisions for growing seeds are in the south of the country, in the Volgograd region, in Transnistria. Our seed production is very serious.

We buy flower seeds all over the world, we choose the most reliable world companies. Although the seeds are not cheap, they are of better quality.
By the way, only two or three companies produce good seeds in Russia. And the rest act, guided by the saying "if you do not deceive - you will not sell." It really annoys me ...
The Sady Rossii company offers its customers the best that I liked myself. The reviews about our seeds all over the country are excellent. I personally have already tested 500 varieties of tomatoes in my life, and still, for the sake of scientific interest, I experiment with new products on the market. I know that for a family it is enough to plant 30 super-tomato bushes with a yield of up to six kg per bush. Enough to treat the neighbors as well….

Winter hardy seedlings

– The products of the Sady Rossii company have another strong point: frost-resistant seedlings. How relevant is it?

- In the South Urals, conditions are extreme for plants: summer with abnormal heat and drought, winter with fierce frosts. For some fruit crops (apricot, pear, etc.) a 40-degree frost during the day is enough for the fruit buds to freeze - which means they will not bear fruit this year.

I often visit Moscow and other cities at exhibitions and all kinds of forums with the participation of many Russian and foreign companies. There is no word about frost resistance and winter hardiness of seedlings.It is understood that in our conditions any seedlings from Holland, Germany, Poland and other countries will take root. Nothing like this! Only resistant berry plants (such as honeysuckle and currants) may not freeze. But fruit trees will definitely have a hard time in our area.

– It turns out that the South Ural, like many regions of Russia, is a zone of limited horticulture and agriculture?

- In no case! Of course, berry growers in our area feel very good, gaining a lot of nutrients. But this does not mean that it is possible to grow here exclusively historically native raspberries, honeysuckle and currants. For example, in the South Urals, even the Chilean cherry with fruits of 25 g grows well and bears fruit. Not to mention the receipt of excellent harvests of the best varieties of sweet cherries - analogues in yield and taste to the southern varieties.
We are talking about growing cherries in a slate form: covering the fruit branches under the snow for the winter. As a rule, severe frosts before snowfall do not come to us. And every centimeter of snow raises the soil temperature by one degree. That is, a 60 cm layer of snow can save plants even from 60-degree frosts (the soil will be 0 degrees). Verified many times.
For me, the amazing winter hardiness of the Ussuri plum turned out to be a serious discovery. Our employee went to the selection station in Ulan-Ude, brought a lot of interesting information. Among other things, it turned out that in their winters with little snow, with winds and frosts below -40 ° C, raspberries have to be buried in the ground for the winter. And the Ussuri plum grows beautifully under such conditions - this is how much it has a huge reserve of winter hardiness!

Strawberries in the Urals - three harvests per year

- At one of the press conferences you said that you are planning to grow strawberries on an industrial scale…

- Let's start doing this this summer (2013). We have already mastered the technology of growing strawberries with minimal costs. The entire area for strawberries is covered with "lutrasil" - a special black non-woven material. In it, slots are made for planting strawberry seedlings, very economical and cheap drip irrigation is carried out. There are no weeds, that is, no "chemistry" is needed. After planting strawberries, manual labor will only be needed when picking berries.

The repair strawberries that we planted in the spring have already managed to give a good harvest at the end of summer - large berries of a presentation. Next summer we will plant 20 hectares of strawberries in the Chelyabinsk region. This is a lot.
It's a paradox, but there is no strawberry market in Russia yet - only a little is grown in the south of the country, in Voronezh and in several other cities. We decided to fill this gap. There are technologies, planting material - strawberry varieties that are well preserved, berries do not flow for a very long time, ideal for transportation even on our terrible roads.
By the way, we intend to harvest three crops per season. The first is a common strawberry that ripens in June-July. The second is remontant strawberry, fruiting from mid-August to the very frost. The third - strawberries from greenhouses, they are already under construction. The price of grown berries for our consumers will be quite comparable to strawberries from Finland and Spain, and even cheaper. You can grow strawberries all year round throughout Russia!

- Will you specialize only in growing strawberries?

- No, this is just one of the berry directions that we want to put on stream.
We accepted a wonderful offer from one of the districts of the Khanty-Mansiysk District, where I worked for 14 years. They have a plant for processing cranberries, lingonberries and other berries, which there is no one to start. We have already agreed with the regional leadership: in the summer we are laying a plantation of honeysuckle (for 500 hectares), raspberries (for 200 hectares), strawberries (for 300 hectares). All these cultures in the Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug grow beautifully in nature. There is enough land; there is watering, labor.My daughter Dasha and her husband want to go there to work: they decided to leave their Moscow apartment for the sake of the beauty of that place. At the same time, we are organizing another branch of our company there in order to test plants for winter hardiness. After all, this is a zone of northern taiga, one of the regions of the Far North.
And in the South Urals, in addition to strawberries, we intend to plant raspberry, honeysuckle and, possibly, currant plantations this summer.

Freeze time

– What else besides strawberries do you plan to grow all year round?

- By next year, we are building a special greenhouse, in which not only strawberries, but also peaches, cherries and other plants will bear fruit all year round. But this is no longer on an industrial scale. Growing fruit-bearing trees and shrubs in a greenhouse is necessary for exhibition activities. Most of the exhibitions take place in winter. Of course, you can sell seedlings by showing their capabilities in photographs. And in winter you can show buyers a bush of some interesting variety, hung with berries. Believe me, it is very difficult to pass by such a spectacle in winter!
We have a refrigerator for storing seedlings with a volume of more than 15 thousand cubic meters (length 85 m, height 9 m, width 20 m). All year round, the refrigerator maintains a temperature of -2 ° C, and with its help we shift the flowering and fruiting times of plants. Let's say, keeping lilac seedlings in the refrigerator, you can get blooming lilacs in summer, and fruiting plants in winter.

– Tell us about your meristem reproduction laboratory.

- This laboratory has several tasks. Firstly, with its help, you can multiply the desired variety in the shortest possible time. For example, the other day I brought to the laboratory from the Tomsk region a sprig of gorgeous honeysuckle variety "Yugan". There are five buds on a branch, of which the laboratory staff undertook to make 30 thousand seedlings per year. For this, a very thin layer of cells is cut, they are placed in a special artificial environment. There the plant develops, and then it is propagated by division again - reproduction proceeds exponentially. Thanks to this, it is possible in a very short time, regardless of the season, to grow the required number of seedlings.
The second task of the meristem reproduction laboratory is to cleanse the variety at the cellular level from various diseases. The third is to speed up selection. For example, it takes 20-25 years to develop a new apple variety. And with the help of serious equipment, including this laboratory, selection can be accelerated up to 5-7 years.

Retail

– You have been working in the Chelyabinsk region for more than 10 years, why did you open your own stores only last summer?

“Gardens of Russia” now has 830 thousand customers throughout Russia, and this year we are planning to cross the millionth mark. The geography of orders is extensive - from the Commander Islands to Kaliningrad, from Sochi to Murmansk. Our company is very well known in Sakhalin, Bratsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Vladivostok ...
The mailing list was enough for us, but now our company has grown, and the growth of orders is at least 40 percent per year.

The time has come to open the company's wholesale branches and retail stores throughout the country. Although, this is partly a forced step: the post office does not always do a good job of delivering plants and Catalogs. For example, at the end of last year we printed out a million new Catalogs in Finland - this is a thousand tons of Finnish coated paper, 26 railway cars. And in order to speed up the distribution of the Catalogs by mail across the country, some had to be sent to Yekaterinburg, the Chelyabinsk post office could not cope.
Long delivery times and heat are detrimental to mailed seedlings. Due to the low speed of delivery of parcels by postal workers, some of the seedlings come to our customers in disrepair. In such cases, we will definitely replace them.
Despite 44 years of gardening experience, I still discover new things for myself. Roses are my discovery of the past year. What is sold in numerous kiosks is not roses, but a parody of them.Even the buds of these flowers do not open! We were lying on airplanes and refrigerators, so after three hours these “roses” have their heads on one side. And when they bring me our roses from the plantation, it is impossible to restrain my admiration: they are gorgeous, they smell great, they bloom for a long time. Now we are contacting specialists who offer beautiful and most unpretentious, abundantly flowering varieties of roses. We will sell roses in pots, send them to customers.

I am engaged in the selection of people

How do you solve the personnel issue, how did you manage to assemble such a strong team?

- Now we are recruiting people for the wholesale and retail directions. After all, it's always a matter of cadres: they either decide everything or nothing. It is easy to work with a professional team; any task is up to the task. And our plans have already been planned for the five-year period. We are preparing for the cultivation of soybeans (since 2014), we are building an oil and fat plant, we will make a rose garden, and we will create a landscape design department.
First of all, people need to create conditions in the company. I am also used to working with individuals whose eyes are on fire. As a manager with 35 years of experience, I am looking for an approach to everyone. It is important to help a person open up, find his place. And then you can get such a return from it, which you did not even expect.
I always face difficulties in recruiting. For example, it is now very difficult to find an agronomist. People should be selected for any specialty. The older generation is already retired, the middle generation has been lost somewhere. And young people come with high demands and without knowledge, they still have to be taught and taught. And so - bit by bit, like gold - I select the frames. The salary in the company is relatively high, the conditions are good. There are hostels, we give apartments, the food is excellent. But at the same time, the requirements are firm: washed down - goodbye. I am the son of the Colonel's Guard, and we have the strictest discipline in the company.

– Is it true that your business is primarily a family business?

- I never hide it. Nephew Alexei Stepanov develops the Victoria firm in Magnitogorsk. Our company employs his brother Alexander, my wife Nadezhda Olegovna, daughter Daria Vladimirovna Stepanova, niece of his wife Alina. It is indeed a family affair in many respects. But it should be understood that there is only one demand from an employee, but from a relative it is a hundred times stricter.

– Vladimir Vasilievich, you have so many projects ... How are you enough for this?

- I am 58 years old. I did not feel happy either at 20, or at 30, or at 40 ... And when my favorite business began to develop actively, I felt “at ease”. Now I am happy, I want to do a lot. Sometimes he will feel sad that he has piled such a colossus on himself. Well, what can you do, someone has to work in Russia ... I am a patriot of the country, a patriot of the region, a patriot of my region. I think Russia has a great future. It is high time for us to get off the oil needle and make the country self-sufficient. I know for sure: even the Khanty-Mansiysk District can feed itself on its own, and also supply half of the country with berries. You just need to put your hands and head into the matter.

– How do you relax?

- I have a favorite tree - plum. To me, she is like sakura to the Japanese. When the plum starts to bloom, I leave everything for a few days. I wander around the garden, admiring the work of bees, bumblebees. The aroma of plum blossoms is delicate, delicate and pleasant. For me, this is the best aroma in the world, the smell of childhood ... Fortunately, I can afford such a mini-vacation.
In general, every day I get up at 5 o'clock in the morning, go to bed at 23 o'clock. In our enterprise, a planning meeting starts at 7:30, and before that we need to redo a lot of things. And I never allow myself a vacation for more than two weeks. The company has a lot of work all year round: we sell seeds, seedlings, supply gardeners with everything they need.

– You use a lot of non-standard techniques in your work.…

- I am sure that in order to be successful, agriculture today needs to be dealt with not just like that, at random, but sophisticated. We need different "chips", micro-discoveries, "zest".And yet - we work for a reputation that we value very much.

Everything about buying plants on the site

Garden

Gardening is a separate branch of crop production. It includes:

fruit growing - growing fruit and berry crops;
gardening - caring for the beds and farming for the purpose of collecting vegetables;
ornamental gardening - growing flowers, shrubs and ornamental trees. It is widely used in landscape design.

How important is gardening and horticulture for a person

Any gardening, no matter what the scale, is definitely a worthy occupation, regardless of the skill level. Being a gardener means constantly learning, learning something new, experimenting.

You can treat gardening in different ways:

get carried away with it as a hobby;
engage in professional activities.

This activity can bring not only pleasure, but also profit. For some, a garden, a vegetable garden, a dacha is an opportunity to take a break from the bustle of the city. Someone has to earn money by growing and selling vegetables and fruits. And in the countryside it is generally an integral part of life.

Gardening and horticulture in the Urals Gardening and horticulture in the Urals

There is a generally accepted division of the Urals: South, Middle and North. Accordingly, the climatic conditions of these regions will also be very different. If we talk about the northern Urals, the climate here is characterized by low average annual temperatures. There are strong winds on the peaks and passes, and fogs in the mountains.

Therefore, having a home garden or vegetable garden in the north, it is advisable to take into account all these factors and approach the issue of gardening more carefully. Indeed, due to low temperatures or high humidity, growing conditions change. Thanks to the mountains, the soil there is quite rocky, which also complicates the process. Therefore, when engaged in gardening, you have to resort to tricks and tricks to help the crop grow and ripen in time.

Cottage garden vegetable garden in the north. Little secrets of truck farming Summer cottage garden vegetable garden in the north

So what should those who live to the north, having a garden and a vegetable garden, do to indulge themselves with vegetables and fruits? Here are a few little tricks to keep in mind.

Enrichment of plots with fertile soil

It is especially important to do this in places with stone deposits, the so-called kurums, which are the result of long destruction of rocks by wind, water and time. Before planting a garden in such an area, it is necessary to properly supply it with black soil.

Wind protection

Fences, trees planted around the perimeter, even placing buildings on the site can help keep your garden out of the wind. For example, the entire site can be divided into zones with berry perennial shrubs, which also become a shield from the wind of smaller crops.

Also, many experienced gardeners use hedge barriers to prevent cold mountain winds from freezing the beds in winter. In addition, in the Urals, shrubs such as currants, grapes, rose hips are covered for the winter, choosing a special film or fabric for this.

Planting mature seedlings

You can sow and grow it in advance in the house in pots. Be sure to dive. When the seedlings have 3-4 leaves, transplant them into more fertile soil, pinching the main root so that the entire root system begins to develop better.

It is also useful, if possible, to harden the seedlings so that after transplanting to a permanent place, it hurts less and takes root faster. To do this, it is placed on a balcony or veranda when spring evenings are still cool (up to + 5 °) and left for 1-2 hours.

Using warm beds

They are prepared in advance. This is best done in the fall. The procedure is performed as follows:

The place in the garden for the future bed is fenced with boards. Inside they fall asleep and trample the grass;
This is followed by a layer of wood waste, you can take sawdust and small branches after pruning. Next is a layer of cardboard for packaging, waste paper or newspapers. All this is carefully compacted;
A layer of humus, compost or podoprevny manure is laid on top, it will not allow weeds to break into the garden bed. Then they cover everything with mown grass;
Now it remains only until the end of summer to add weeds and grass there after weeding. It is advisable to water every week so that organic waste will rot;
By the next season, the warm bed is ready. It remains only to cover it with a 10-centimeter layer of soil and plant a vegetable garden.

In the process of decomposition in such beds, heat is released, heating the soil, which contributes to good plant growth, protects against sudden changes in temperature and frost as well.

You can also arrange hotbeds and greenhouses, which will help not only protect the garden and vegetable garden from winds and low temperatures, but also save on watering. It is also a great way to enjoy ripe fruits first.

Watering

Gardening and horticulture for beginners - watering

If we talk about watering, then it is necessary to take into account the needs of each plant in the garden separately. Many of them cannot be watered with cold water, otherwise they will hurt. Therefore, if there is a spring or a well on the site, then it is better to acquire an irrigation pit or a container where the spring water can first heat up a little.

The site can be uneven due to the mountainous and hilly Ural area. Therefore, even when planning a garden, it is advisable to take into account the placement of plantings. Since water can collect in the lowlands, it means that it is desirable to plant more moisture-loving plants there.

Weeding

Summer cottage garden vegetable garden and weeding

Since the territory of the Urals is not only temperature drops, but also strong winds, many unnecessary seeds are introduced into the territory of the gardens. Weed control must be carried out constantly. This can be done by choosing rhizomes when preparing the soil.

But there are other ways too:

If the land was loosened, it is better to dig up the area with a pitchfork, since you can cut the roots of the weeds with a shovel, thereby increasing their number;
You can scorch a young growth of grass in carrot or beet beds with a blowtorch fire, as they sprout first. After that, be sure to cool the soil by watering;
It is better to weed the larger grass with your hands, pulling it out from the roots. And try to prevent the flowering of the weed so that it does not have time to sow. There are also chemical control agents such as Tornado 1000. These are usually applied in the fall after harvest.

Fertilizers

In specialized stores, you can find a huge selection of various fertilizers that will help you grow your garden much faster, despite bad weather or the rocky soil of the Urals. It is recommended to use succinic acid or "Life-giving force" biocompost to stimulate growth.

Also, some organic fertilizers and natural insulation can be found in your yard: manure or humus, sawdust, wood ash, bird droppings, peat, silt.

Pest control methods

In order to harvest a good crop, it must be protected and preserved. Therefore, do not forget about pests. There are 4 main methods of dealing with them.

Chemical

Based on the use of insecticides and pesticides. They are used to:

insect control, you can choose for this Alatar;
weed control with herbicides such as Basf;
diseases of plants that Skor, ProfitGold, Topaz, Raek fight against.

But do not forget that they are also not harmless to the animal world and humans. Therefore, before using them in your garden, it is advisable to consult a specialist.

Biological

The biological method is based on the use of living organisms and their waste products. Previously, entomophages were used - parasitic and predatory insects.For example, the ladybug, as it is the number one enemy for aphids.

Now more preference is given to pathogenic microorganisms - pathogens of insect diseases, fungi, viruses.

Agrotechnical

This method can be considered the most economical. It is based on a system of measures that are calculated individually for each site.

These include:

selection of cold-resistant varieties for the northern regions;
special system of soil cultivation;
maintaining the optimal timing of sowing and harvesting;
weed control.

This can be a useful "neighborhood" of crops in the garden. So the basil planted next to the pepper will ward off aphids, ants and ticks.

Physicomechanical

It consists in creating barriers and mechanical traps in the garden. For example, cabbage seedlings can be covered with a special fine mesh that allows light and air to pass through, retains heat and does not interfere with plant growth. At the same time, it prevents butterflies and flies from laying eggs on the leaves.

Glue traps are very common. They are made in greenhouses and on trees. You can also tie a belt with a porous surface to tree trunks, for example, corrugated cardboard or several layers of tow or hemp.

The main thing is that there are voids in them, into which pests fall. These belts need to be changed frequently. To attract insects, they are moistened with sour milk, fermented kvass or beer.

Also, physical and mechanical methods include manual collection and destruction of pests: shaking off, washing off, collecting and disposing of winter nests.

Outcome:

Nowadays, more and more people are thinking about healthy eating, about environmentally friendly products. And the most reliable way to get them is to grow them yourself. Having a home garden vegetable garden is not an opportunity to be missed.

Date of publication:Growing