How to Grow Tomatoes Intercropped with Cowpeas? Latest Planting Technique Tutorial
Tomato is what we call xihongshi in daily life, and the nutritional value of tomato is very high. Nowadays the planting area of tomato is very large, and when planting tomatoes, in order to improve the utilization rate of land resources, many people choose intercropping. There are many vegetables suitable for intercropping with tomato, and cowpea is one of them. So how should tomato be intercropped with cowpea? Below, the editor brings you the technique of intercropping tomato with cowpea, let's take a look!
1. Land preparation and seed selection
When intercropping tomato with cowpea, the selection of the plot is very important. We should choose soil that is flat in terrain, good in drainage and irrigation, and fertile as the main type. And the soil must not have been planted with solanaceous crops or melon and bean crops within three years. Then deep-plow the soil for land preparation, apply fully decomposed farmyard manure per mu as base fertilizer, together with an appropriate amount of compound fertilizer, then open furrows and make beds ready for sowing. After doing the soil work well, you must choose good varieties. Tomato varieties must have good tolerance to low temperature, weak light, and disease resistance. The selection of cowpea varieties is similar to that of tomato, only in this way can the normal joint growth of both be ensured.
2. Timely sowing
The sowing times of tomato and cowpea are somewhat different. When intercropping, we must first sow the tomato seeds. Tomato generally starts seedling raising in August, then is planted in September, and generally can be marketed in February of the following year. Cowpea should be raised as seedlings in early February, and its seedling raising method is mainly plug tray seedling raising, with a seedling age of generally about half a month. It can be directly intercropped between the tomato plants, and can be harvested and marketed around April. Then when planting, attention should also be paid to controlling the planting density well; the plant and row spacing of tomato and cowpea should be kept at about 50*45 cm.
3. Field management
When planting tomato, when the tomato seedlings emerge, the temperature should be kept at about 28 degrees. When more than about 70% of the tomato seedlings have emerged, the plastic film can be uncovered for ventilation. After the tomato cotyledons spread, the temperature is appropriately lowered to about 18 degrees. When about two true leaves have grown, the daytime temperature is raised to about 25 degrees, and the day-night temperature difference is kept at 10 degrees, maintained continuously for 2-3 weeks. When planting cowpea, before the seedlings emerge, the temperature should be kept at about 25 degrees; after emergence, the temperature is raised by about 2-3 degrees, and kept at about 15-18 degrees at night.
4. Rest the greenhouse in time
After both the tomato and cowpea have been fully harvested and marketed, we must do a good job of resting the greenhouse. Seal all the ventilation openings and exits of the greenhouse to avoid air leakage, and watering may be omitted. After applying an appropriate amount of organic fertilizer, rotary-till the soil. The resting period of the greenhouse is generally in summer, because the temperature in summer is very high. The temperature in the greenhouse can generally reach about 65 degrees, so if high-temperature greenhouse sealing is carried out, then it can kill the pathogens and pests in the greenhouse. Thereby effectively reducing the occurrence of diseases.
The above is a brief introduction to the planting technique of intercropping tomato with cowpea. That is all for today's introduction; this article is for reference only, and I hope it can help everyone!