Tuberous Begonia propagation

Brian Whyer brian.whyer@btinternet.com
Sun, 05 May 2013 15:20:35 PDT


> In old gardening books I have often found the advice to divide Begonia
> tubers. Personally I would not do it. The risk of losing all the
> segments seems too big.  If your Begonias have shoots of only a few cm
> tall right now I would wait a little longer until they have 2 or 3
> leaves and are about 10cm tall. Then cut them off at their base,
> sometimes they have rootlets. In general these cuttings root well and
> produce a reasonable sized tuber. I have done this many times with
> little losses. I never lost a mother tuber this way.
> Even leaf cuttings are possible, I found an interesting article on this
> subject and tried last summer. The leaves rooted indeed but did not
> produce tubers big enough to survive the winter. I might have started
> too late in the season, though.
> What type of tuberous Begonia do you grow? Species or Hybrids? 

I have several large pots of one of the Begonia boliviensis forms. Individual plants are 2 feet or more across by end of summer. I started with 1 and rooted several thin side stem cuttings in the past, but this only gives a relatively small plant towards the end of summer. I was hoping to get some new larger plants by starting now as there are several shoots on each tuber. I have only rooted semi mature shoots before, not the soft vigorous spring shoots starting now which don't look good cutting material to me. I will try some shoots when they get larger.

Brian



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