How To Prepare Garden Begonia For Wintering?

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Video: How To Prepare Garden Begonia For Wintering?

Video: How To Prepare Garden Begonia For Wintering?
Video: Begonias: How to Prepare and Store them for Winter 2024, March
How To Prepare Garden Begonia For Wintering?
How To Prepare Garden Begonia For Wintering?
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How to prepare garden begonia for wintering?
How to prepare garden begonia for wintering?

In order for the beautiful begonia to please with its amazing flowering for more than one year, it is extremely important to approach its storage in the cold seasons as responsibly as possible - if you do not provide begonias with proper winter care, you can lose it very quickly. However, this is not so difficult to do, the main thing is to know what exactly needs to be done

Varieties of begonias

There are several varieties of begonias, and each of them requires a special care inherent only in it in the difficult and cold winter period. Currently, gardeners are actively growing luxurious tuberous, graceful bushy and magnificent decorative leafy begonias - they all take root equally well in our gardens. Ornamental-deciduous specimens, as well as bushy ones, usually do not require any special conditions for wintering - in order to protect them throughout the winter, with the onset of stable cold weather, you just need to cut off wilted plant stems, and then thoroughly mulch the bushes with garden leaf fall or straw.

As for tuberous begonias, they are quite demanding for winter care - it is from proper care during this difficult time for beautiful flowers that both the beauty of the flowers and the duration of their flowering will depend entirely! So, if such a begonia does not bloom for a long time, or if there are too few flowers on it, and mostly small ones, this is direct evidence that a beautiful plant was not stored correctly in winter.

How to prepare garden begonia for wintering?

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As soon as the first frosts strike, it is necessary to dig up the begonia bulbs, trying not to damage them in any way (you should not rush too much in this case, since minor autumn frosts do not harm the tubers in any way). Usually, this is not at all difficult to do, since the tubers in adult plants are quite strong and large. Ideally, before you start digging out the bulbs, you should wait until the begonia itself prepares for the future overwintering - as a rule, this preparation is accompanied by the death of the vegetative parts of the plant, as well as yellowing of the leaves and their subsequent fall. In addition, closer to the end of the growing season, the matured tubers increase their weight and significantly increase in size, because in the process of dying off of the aboveground parts, all the most valuable nutrient compounds migrate to them! Around the same period, the buds of renewal are laid - later, when the begonia successfully overwinters, it is from them that the development of new young shoots will begin.

Having dug up the plants, all frost-bitten stems are immediately cut off from them, leaving only small "stumps" (that is, shoots) on the surfaces, the height of which should not exceed three centimeters. This will prevent the formation of pathogenic fungi contributing to the inevitable infection of nodules. Further, the plants are cleaned of soil adhered to them, placed in boxes and placed in a dry, warm enough and, importantly, well-ventilated place for drying. And two weeks later, as soon as the roots dry up, they are cleaned of the soil remaining on them and from the dried out processes. The nodules prepared in this way are placed in several rows in pre-prepared wooden boxes and sprinkled with either dried peat combined with vermiculite, or with clean river sand. The addition of vermiculite in this case is only welcome, since its ability to normalize and regulate the moisture content of the substrate helps to significantly reduce the risk of root rot development. In addition, in order to reduce the percentage of tuber loss, they must be sprinkled with a sand mixture so as to avoid their close proximity to each other.

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The begonia ready for wintering is sent to a cool place, the thermometer in which should not fall below ten degrees, and the air humidity should be within 60% - in a word, these are quite standard conditions of modern cellars with basements.

The average duration of the dormant period of the beautiful begonias is three months - as a rule, this is the period from mid-November to almost the very last days of February. It is extremely important to try to resist the temptation to water the plants during this time, as this can easily lead to the awakening of dormant buds.

From time to time, approximately once a month, all stored tubers must be inspected for the presence of root rot that causes a lot of trouble or mold that is harmful to the nodules. If lesions are still found, they are first cleaned, and then treated with brilliant green or colloidal sulfur. And in case of especially extensive lesions, the affected plants are eliminated from the box in order to avoid further spread of the infection. This approach will keep the begonia tubers in almost perfect condition until spring!

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