Begonia Season at an end

[Sharon Bryson]

Each fall it is a challenge to have the begonias stay in the ground as late as possible, but to also get them dug before a devilish frost or an early snow makes the job very unpleasant.
This year the challenge has been to get a dry day.
Yesterday seemed to fit the bill, so the job was undertaken.
The bed had had no frost, so there were still lots of flowers. That makes identifiying the colours much easier.

The bed has both regular tuberous begonias and Begonia grandis.



The foliage is trimmed off, leaving a stump of stem. The root ends are vigorously rubbed to remove most of the soil and roots.
I put each tuber in a labelled strawberry basket.

Some of the tubers were quite impressive in the size of their stalks, and also a few were too big to fit very nicely in the basket!

All the baskets fit quite nicely into a few propagation trays.


The wheelbarrow of "debris" from the first batch.


We keep them in the basement until the stem residue dries up, then pack them away in layers in a large box in the cold room.

The Begonia grandis are a lot "rootier" than the others. They need to be cleaned up quite a bit after they dry out.


They generated their own wheelbarrow of debris! A zillion flowers still attached. It is always a bit sad to cut down all those stalks with flowers still going strong. I have to tell myself to "just do it"




It is just as well I got this part of the job done, since it was very cold and frosty last night.
There are a couple of other beds with B. grandis and they looked a bit pitiful this morning. They will not be harmed, but I will try and get them out soon.

[Eeyore]

Nice barrow full of cut fleurs Sharon.

I managed to rescue only one begonia before the cold hit. It then began to rot off at the soil level so I rescued a few cuttings from the stems that hadn't begun to rot.

[earwig]

My but they have done well. Really beautiful.