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> July tips Tips for
July
by Brad Thompson
1. Fertilizing: Continue fertilizing
regularly using quarter strength fertilizer
once a week. Your begonias will not grow to
their best if you are a sporadic fertilizer.
You will notice a big difference in how well
your plants grow with regular feeding.
Carmen brought up an important detail at the
last PV meeting. She asked why we suggest
using Nutricote and also say to fertilize
with a liquid. It isn’t absolutely essential
to use both but the Nutricote is a catchall
for when you’re too busy to keep up with the
weekly liquid. Plus it adds a little
fertilizer to those times in between liquid
fertilizing when you are using plain water.
2. Cleanup: Keep bad leaves removed,
they won’t get any better and they will
quickly be replaced by fresh new leaves. If
you remove the bad leaves now the plant may
still have time to fill in that bare spot
before a show. Your plants will be healthier
if you keep the leaves cleaned of dirt and
dust. Keeping both your pots and your leaves
washed and clean will be a big timesaver
when you take plants to shows. Do not use
any type of leaf shine products on begonia
leaves. Some members spray their plants with
Epsom salts to keep the leaves healthy. I’m
not sure of the ratio but I believe it was 1
teaspoon to a gallon of water. I try to keep
my leaves rinsed off when I water but I
don’t do this to plants that seem to resent
getting their leaves wet or when the sun is
brightly shining on them or if the weather
is extremely warm or cold.
3. Pests: Try hard to keep up with
inspecting your begonias and other plants
for giant whitefly and other pests. Giant
whiteflies are easy to miss because they
make their clusters under the leaves and you
don't notice them until they have built a
large colony. Carefully checking under the
leaves and either removing the leaves or
wiping off the eggs will go a long way
towards helping to keep them in check.
Carefully check any plants you purchase to
make sure you don’t bring home the giant
whiteflies from meetings. When taking plants
to shows take special care in looking under
the leaves for whiteflies and mealy bugs and
also in the leaf axils. I have seen many
otherwise wonderful plants removed from a
show when pests were overlooked.
4. Mildew and Disease: You shouldn’t
be having a mildew or disease problem at
this time of year. If you do, you may want
to question some of your cultural practices
or enlist help from other members. You may
be trying to grow varieties that don’t like
the areas where you are growing them. Try
moving those to other areas with more air or
light to see if that helps. After Jeanne
Jones’ suggestion of using Rose Defense and
a couple years of using it myself I can say
that it works very well on begonias. Be sure
to follow the package instructions and avoid
spraying plants during the hottest part of
the day or when the sun is on them. As with
all new things, try it first on a couple of
plants and wait a few days to be sure that
it works the same for you.
5. Pruning & Pinching: You should
stop pinching any plants that you intend to
enter in a show this year. Any plants that
you aren’t going to show you of course
continue to pinch if you want to make the
plant fuller. You will sacrifice blooms
though. Don’t forget to keep pruning down or
pinching back new shoots that come up so
they don’t ruin the shape of your plants on
basket type plants. You should continue to
do this even on plants that will be going to
shows. Make sure to cut those stray stems
down inside the plant so the stump doesn’t
show.
6. Watering: Your plants will be
needing watering more now that the weather
is warm. I generally water my begonias about
twice a week during warm weather. This is
only an example, not a guide, but should
give you some idea how often to really need
to water. Begonias is sunnier locations may
need watering three times a week. If you
have a begonia that wilts make sure that it
is dry and not wilting because it has root
damage. If a plant’s soil is wet and the
plant is wilted it has suffered root damage
and should be repotted right away. Remove
all the dead roots and soggy soil and pot
into a pot slightly larger than the
remaining rootball. You may need to trim
back some of the plant so it will have less
foliage
to support when it recovers.
7. Repotting: In observing your
plants you may notice some that dry out
faster or slower than the other plants
around them. These plants probably need
repotting. Potting up in the case of plants
that dry out too soon and possibly potting
down for that that are staying too wet or
don’t seem to be growing back too well from
pruning. You can safely repot all begonias
now. Any new plants you purchase from shows
should be immediately put in your own mix,
even if it’s into the same size pot. I know
some people advocate letting the plant
acclimate first but from my experience they
don’t acclimate that well when you are
trying to water them correctly in someone
else’s mix. Newly repotted small plants
should be kept in a shadier location for a
few days after the repotting though to make
the adjustment to a new locale easier. I
know there are some people that don’t always
practice what they preach but you can ask
anyone who knows me if I don’t repot every
plant the day I bring it home. I’m not
insinuating that I’m perfect in following my
own advice, except for this one item. When
potting plants up to a larger pot, usually
you only go up one pot size at a time. All
begonias except for rhizomatous and rexes
should be planted lower in the pot that they
were in the previous pot if possible. This
will cause the plant to put out more new
roots and also cause more new basal growth.
8. General Notes: It’s still not too
late to be taking a few cuttings and
starting new little plants to share with
friends and the clubs. I try to do a few
cutting every day. This time of year those
cuttings are mostly stray stems or stems
that are facing the wrong direction. Taking
cuttings this way isn’t so much of a chore.
Every few days I look through my little jars
of cuttings to see if any have rooted. I try
to pot up a flat’s worth at t time to make
it easier. A flat is 25 3 inch pots. So when
I see I have 25 or so rooted I pot them up.
All this cutting taking and potting up only
takes a few minutes every week. If you buy
plants at any of our sales this year, keep
in mind that you can get a faster start on a
big plant by buying three of the same plant
and combining them in a larger pot or
basket. Not everyone can afford this
practice but if you can it does speed up the
process. Starting with one small plant may
take a few years to grow into a large full
plant whereas combining three will give you
a large full plant in a year or less,
sometimes immediately depending on how big
the three you combine are.
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