wow! very pretty!

do you have any idea of how long these exhibition plants are grown in these pots?

like do they start them from small plants and grow large/ is there 'time grown' requirement to exhibit?

I really do not know as each one is different. I would say most could be done in a year or less while the dregei could be years old (but then I've never had much luck with that kind of begonia).

I started cuttings last February by leaf wedges, moved them to 3 inch pots in May, and took four of those 3 inch pots (all different) and moved them to a big square pot (maybe 12x12) and by September I had an excellent show plant (if there was a show going on). I showed it at our club meeting in September and after that meeting started an identical pot with slightly different plants and put that pot in the Atlanta Flower Show this February. They grow that quick!

Bashful Bandit 2/22/2017

rexes 2 days later

Bashful on 5/9/2017

and the rexes

9/16/2017

another side of it on 10/17/2017

and the pot I started in September from the same 3 inch pots at the Flower Show back in Feb. I subbed the biggest rex for another one and added a U number for another corner.

One more example but I don't recommend this. I bought a Caribbean Queen and C. King at PHOE May 2005. They were in gallon nursery pots and I put each in their own separate 18 inch pot. By fall they were HUGE.

Here is the King and Plum Gorgeous about 6 weeks after buying and planting them in 18 inch pots (middle of June)

Here is the Queen (slightly larger than the King) 10-5-2005 after moving several into the yard to get more sun.

and the King

They lost all their leaves during a hard frost early November. I kept them in the same pot for two years and in the cool dim garage over winter. They both lost a lot of size. A huge pot is good for summer but I would strongly recommend downsizing for winter unless you have a warm greenhouse for winter.

somehow my rexes and rhizos from leaves are all growing super slow 1st year. my mini-xmas suddenly got soft rhizome in FL in very good light, so i cut the leaves and they all rooted within a month and i potted them in pure perlite with long-fiber sphag on top to keep it moist longer. i give them 10-10-10 liquid feed periodically, since they are in perlite. they grew over summer well (by my standards), but not anywhere like yours. it's all in the light - yours get it good even in winter under lights and then outdoors they really take off. those in huge pots! wow! like in PHOE! humongous!

in the 2nd year (if they survive with some leaves left after winter), they speed up a little, but it's really only in 3rd yr they start growing normally..but by 3rd yr rexes do not survive with me and i have to restart if any leaves are still holding.

my apt does not have any room for lights, though i think i can set up may be a couple over lowest shelves, where it's near the window but other plants shade it.

so i'm thinking about it for next winter.

I might be even longer in Miami over next winter though - so many more new begonias will be coming, whether they survive or not :(. They did fantastically while there in bright FL light for sev months and then lost most leaves due to mildew and lower light in NY. still holding though, some new growth starting. But what a difference bright southern light makes!

The light does make a difference but even in apartments with artificial light, you can grow some nice specimens.

How many begonias do you have and how do you handle two locations? Seems like that would be difficult.

Finally caught my visitor this winter yesterday and put it outside where it belongs. Now if I can catch the anoles and toad.

It's time to turn my attentions to the great outdoors.

it's been a nasty cold spring here everything is still grey. so nice to see yr green garden!

what a cute frog?! so u caught it inside? it overwintered? how funny!

you have great japanese maples (right?)!

if only i had a garden...for now it's not in the works.

i sort of overwinter in Miami, but only for 3mo. So i take my small rexes and some very small plants with me :)). in a rush of packing i forgot a few precious ones and then some did so well over summer, they were too big and i just didn't have space.

a couple of those died or just barely survived. Next time i'm taking leaves from all of them for rooting with me, just as a safe-guard.

I set up everything on self-watering wicks, but the new ones rooted 6mo before were still in perlite and perlite wicks a little, but poorly. So some dried up severely, though they were half-tented with vents. and some are recovering - it's quite a miracle. one rooted leaf was in completely closed clam-shell and perlite totally dried up, but! it still looked good, not wilted or anything. so i watered it and waited for 2 mo - and it's finally producing 2 tiny leaves :). Unbelievable!

But rexes are a problem, i can't leave them on wicks - too cold/damp for them, so they have to come with me and therefore have to be small. Rhizos are more resilient when big - so they do OK on wicks, and they are in soiless mix with lots of perlite, ultra lite, and very shallow plastic tubs.

i have like 180 plants on wicks and they survive without me mostly fine, may be 6-8 semi-dried but not dead..i set up water to last 3mo, but DH has to come back after some time and he can add/water a bit, but does so very haphazardly. So it's hit and miss sometimes, but it helps nevertheless. But i cant' give up my fun in the sun in winter, so i manage the best i can :).

i only have a few Begonias, i'm just a beginner. My best and biggest is dwarf cane 'Cracked Ice' that i got in PHOE. It grew from 3" pot 4" plant into 3' plant. i propagated it of course - that's the easiest one to leave on wicks, but it does shed half of leaves.

here's a pic of it last Nov - i had to cut half of canes since all the bottom leaves fell, even though it had like 9qts of water set up. I think it was too cool to be so moist at 63F-65F. Next time it'll go in the my warm room instead.

then i have 2 med-size rhizos: PHOE's Best Pattern and 'Hocking Inner Glow' that i grew from very small 3" pots into pretty nice fat rhizomes - they do ok on wicks in very bright light on top shelf in west window - in my warm room. They even bloom in feb-mar.

But Hocking has very strange very dense flowers that hide low in the foliage, i cut them off.

it used to have very nice veined variegation, but it blacked out as it got older. Here it is last June - took it out on the balcony for a pic. I can't say i like it ;(...it's marginally OK.

But PHOE's best bloomed 1st time for me this year - quite pretty. It had several tall stalks. I like them best when they are still fully closed.

and then i play with small ones: had rooted and going U400 (dried up), have tiny rhizo 'Black Fang' going, also rex 'Mini-Xmas', that needs re-starting all the time.

oh and small rhizo 'Wild Pony' - that one is a blast! i love it! but it dropped half leaves in transfer, i was afraid i'd loose it.

very small just from leaf last fall 'Marmaduke'.

a couple silver and patterned silver, both Rhizos i think.

and what i was usre was 'Art Hodes' but now i think it's 'Boomer' - that one is going well for me, though DH dried it up inadvertently and now it's regrowing slowly but well.

here it is stuck on the west shelf with a bunch of others.

and the 4 from last winter in FL: what u ID'ed as may be 'Pandora', and 3 from Harmony (Dragon, Xmas Eve and Raspberry Beret). Only 'Xmas Eve' did well, no decline since xfer, other 3 barely alive and still spraying for mildew :(.

WOW! That sounds like a lot of work but it looks like you have it all set up for survival of the fittest.

We went to Thailand for two weeks in July (2006) and I had set up micro-irrigation in some pots and sprinklers for most plants clumped around the sprinkler. These were all on battery operated timers. This included the front porch with just micro drip. When I got home all the plants in the backyard looked great but half the plants on the porch were dead! I forgot to turn on the freaking faucet!! Lesson learned - make sure everything not only works but everything is turned on. We went to Okinawa in 2012 for two weeks and no problems and back to Thailand in 2015 for two weeks without any issues. We are headed back there again this summer. My only fear is a busted hose or weak point on the whole system. One weekend we went to TN and a cheap nozzle broke spewing probably thousands of gallons of water in the 48 hours we were gone. Our backyard neighbor left a note on our garage door to warn us. The next day all the water was still spilling on their property so he hopped a six foot privacy fence and turned off our faucet.

I dreaded a whole week away from indoor watering this past week. Most fared very well but there were many of the smaller ones that showed a lot of leaf damage. The main thing is they are still alive and will replace those leaves in short time.

wow! flooding ! that's serious!

But of course you have many more plants AND a yard to worry about! so it's even more difficult!.

i actually trained myself not to think about it - otherwise what kind of a holiday it would be? ..i've been doing it for years so i know it'll be fine. i have less then 3% mishaps and maybe another 3% some slight problems. I regard it as a success. this past winter only 1 plant dried up (my U400) and 7 dropped a good amt of leaves.

yah, it's a lot of work. actually i set up for 4mo, since it takes me at least 3 weeks to slowly fill and set-up. but then i'm totally free! and when i come back most plants can go on for another 2-4wks - so it's like a total winter relief from plant chores.

2 weeks i don't sweat. 3 weeks in summer (when it's hot and they r drinking like mad!) takes 5 days to set up (fill all those reservoirs with water/fert solution) but even my balcony is set up too for 95F - no problem.

I would probably have to go to some kind of wicking system indoors if I left for more than a week. Too many trays to set up though - - probably close to 300 and trays can go from 18 plants to maybe 2 or even 1. A greenhouse with an automated watering system would be best.

The flooding from the hose was just where it hit the ground and flowed to lower ground. Unfortunately the lowest point is on the other side of the fence. Or should I say fortunately as my neighbor is the one who caught it and turned off our faucet.

you do a lot of propagation in peat-pellets - those can't be wicked : as peat absorbs way to much water. it needs to be cut by half with perlite to work.

i started transfering everything slowly to light wicking mix after my AV count went above 30 :). i just did not want to monitor them all the time.

So for wicking peat in the mix at least 35-40% is a must and addition of 40% perlite for aeration is needed.

for small pots up to 6" i plant all my newly rooted things into 40-50% perlite and the rest AV soiles lix.

for larger stuff i make my own jungle mix with increased amt of perlite.

so it's approx 5 part AV mix (or any other soilles mix), 5 part perlite, 3
part small fir bark.

i started cutting peat mix with half coir-peat and bark with half coir-chips, because they rewet much easier then peat/bark. It took some time but ev time i repotted i used new mix and inserted nylon rope wicks (2 for larger pots), coiling it around the bottom and rising up to the top.

And then to increase the wicking and aeration i line the pots with coir-matting like for wire baskets, the wick goes on the outside of that. I all sounds complicated, but ultimately it saves me time as once i set it up over bath-baskets/buckets of some sort - it waters itself.

it really works for long vacations! it's passive hydro and it works so long as your reservoir under the pot has enough water for the period.

no automation, no electricity, no faucets.

Yes and No on the peat pellets. Jiffy has a wicking system that cost a little bit more than their regular trays. The reservoir lasts a lot longer than normal trays. Two issues is the pellets must stay in contact with the wicking mat and the lid while higher than the normal tray is too low as the plants get bigger.

My mentor used a lot of perlite in her mix and I tried that for a few years but found it to be too much of a mess as any perlite on top floated or blew off and to me it was an aesthetic aspect too - it distracted from the plant. I still use perlite but only for propagation of succulents and the like. I do not use perlite in any of the mixes I buy (the mixes do have perlite in them but not a lot).

It does sound like you have it worked out for your weeks away lifestyle. I think I would go with a micro drip system due to the sheer number of plants I have. There is no one system that works for all but then that's life.

Here is that wicking tray by Jiffy.

but the rectangular trays allow a high dome lid so you can grow your plants on for several more weeks without worry of drying out completely.

I will have to give these a look a little later on. Hopefully I will never need to use it but you just never ever know...

Beautiful begonias for sure! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Tim, That was the tip of the iceberg and I tried to pick out my favorites that I saw. I don't know if I mentioned it but there were 115 entries.

Flamingo Queen was the People's Choice and I second that (I didn't vote though). The Best in Show was this 'Hugh McLaughlin' which while grown very nice, I don't know how it beat out the rest.

My own H.M. from a few years ago:

i think yours looks better :). and in general it's quite an easy begonia to grow, so why the 1st prize?

I don't know why it won Best in Show. You would have to ask the judges that question. Yes, H.M. is a stunning begonia that looks so much like a rex but can keep most of its leaves in winter and doesn't have the same issue with mildew as a rex does.

Anyway H.M. was created by Antoon Hoefnagels in the Netherlands and he keeps producing very colorful small leaf rex like begonias. A lot of his begonias look like the ones coming out of Walmart and Lowe's (Exotic Angels).

Here is Antoon's website:

http://www.kwekerijhoefnagels.nl/

He was one of the speakers at the convention about the Nagoya Protocol. So far the USA has not signed on with this agreement. It seems to aim more at the deep pockets (pharma companies) that use plant breeding to make new products but is all encompassing so Antoon falls under the same set of rules.

interesting! i've bought HM at the green market stall and also got what i believe was 'Rumba'. and i got 'Fedor' at the garden shop. They are all his. and i thought for some reason that HM is a very old cultivar that fell out of fashion. i don't see it anywhere.

I also have seen others like 'Etna' in garden shops/nurseries.

and 'Iron Cross' is his too? i was thinking of buying it at Longwood, they always have it.

I don't remember the year H.M. was introduced but not that long ago (less than 10 years?) I think one of the parents was hatacoa but not sure which flavor of it was used. Antoon was showing some of his crosses at the convention (slide show) and how they doubled, tripled, quadrupled the chromosomes for a thicker leaf but seems like there were some issues with that too.

No, Iron Cross is a common name for masoniana which is a species.

but he has it on his site...why then? i thought he just has his hybrids...

hm-m...all the ones that i mentioned above are on his site.

I actually love HM - i even managed to keep it going for a few years, but then it declined of all times in aug, when it should be going full speed ahead.

I'm nursing a tiny 'Fedor' , i find it very pretty - very nice clear well defined variegation.

I cannot answer that question. You would have to ask Antoon.

I should start a bunch of new H.M. this summer. So easy.

It seems I buy a new Fedor every year even though I have a couple from the previous years and easy to start. I mean for $3.50 or $5 depending on pot size, why not?

Here is one on 2/11/2018

A tray full of small begonias. What a shame I have to keep them small. Same date so it may be the same plant.

Another one with another rex from either WM or Lowe's. Another room and this was Jan 16

yah, why not? you have room in the basement LOL! i'm bursting at the seams - can't fit any more plants into the apt and frankly, i need time to do other things too ;)...

I need a huge greenhouse is what I need. Then I could add misters, drip emitters, etc and not worry about water everywhere. Here are a few of my crazy plants back in January.

and how much time do you spend watering daily ;)?...

If I haven't watered in days, about 3 hours. If I go down daily I can always find something that might need some water so not long at all.

Butch,

What is the name of the beautiful begonia in your last set of photos located in the fourth photo below ‘escargot?

Shirley

Shirley,

The begonia in question is kingiana, a very small leaf succulent that can be quite fussy - too much water and it drops leaves, too dry and it starts shedding leaves. Seems like it being so succulent that I could leave it in drier air but I haven't found that to be true either.

Here is what the tiny blooms look like. The leaves range from a dime to a quarter size (for me)