2 Years Later and My Begonia Plant is Going Strong

How was your weekend? I hope you enjoyed some time off. We've had beautiful weather, so I made sure to have lunch outside each day. Anyway, I wanted to update you on my budget begonia basket from 2021.

I bought this tuberous begonia bulb for $3.50 in spring of 2021 to plant in a free-pile hanging basket. When fall rolled around that year, I discontinued watering, allowed the foliage to die back, and moved the bulb, pot and all, into our garage for the rest of fall, all of winter, and early spring. In mid-spring, I brought the pot back out to the deck and began to water it. After a few weeks, some new growth emerged from the soil. We enjoyed the large white begonia blooms all summer. When fall of 2022 rolled around, I repeated the process to ready the plant for winter storage again. This past spring, I brought the pot out and began the watering routine. So far I have 6 blossoms in some state of blooming. I also have about 8 stems with leaves on the plant.

Here's a photo from the original plant in 2021. It was a nice, but small plant for this basket that summer, only providing about 4 blooms total. Last year the plant was larger with more blooms and leaves. And this year, the plant is filling the basket even more.

To overwinter begonias, the plant needs to be prepared by decreasing watering at the end of season/beginning of fall until the point the leaves have withered. Before the low outdoor temperature drops below 50 degrees F, the dry plant needs to be moved to a cool, not cold, and dry location, like a garage or cool room of a basement. Some folks dig the bulbs out of the soil and store them in a dry medium like vermiculite. I've found simply allowing the plant to die back and the soil to dry thoroughly is enough for my situation to overwinter in our cool, but not freezing garage.

When spring 2024 rolls around, I'll bring the potted begonia back out to the deck and start the watering routine up again. I hope by next year I have even more blooms on this plant. 

My original cost was $3.50. With 3 years of enjoyment so far, my cost per year averages out to a little over $1. That's a bargain for so much beauty and so little work.

Caring for a Hydroponic Grocery Store Basil Plant Once Home

one-month old produce department basil plant 

My daughter grew impatient waiting for my home-grown from seed basil this summer, and in late June she bought one of those basil plants sold in the produce department of the grocery store. She paid about $3.00 for a pot of about a dozen basil stems grown hydroponically in a tiny container. The container looked to be about 4 ounces in capacity. All of these plants were without soil and kept in a flat of water at the store and over-wrapped in florist cellophane to hold in moisture and prevent damage to the leaves.

Once home, the label said to remove the protective cellophane and place the little pot in a deep saucer with about an inch of water, then place the whole plant in indirect light indoors. I suspected basil plants cared for in this way were designed to last a couple of weeks, max, with no soil to provide nutrients and even out the moisture.

a soil level view of the dozen or so plants all together in a single pot

Since my daughter really wanted her basil to last all summer, I gave her some instructions for lengthening the lifespan of her plants. The roots had grown very long and were tangled, coming through the holes in the tiny cup. I knew the roots couldn't be pulled back through the holes to remove the plants from the cup. So I told her to use the clippers to snip down the sides of the cup in several places, breaking off the cup sides as she could without injuring the plants. Then I gave her a 1-gallon pot to fill with fresh potting soil. After filling, she carefully sank the basil plants still in the now broken-open cup into the larger pot of soil. Our thinking was the roots would continue to grow and would escape the tiny cup and find growing space in the larger pot. 

For the first few days the plants looked a bit wilty. My daughter gave it water daily and placed it outdoors in a filtered-sun spot during the days only. The plant had spent its entire life inside a temperature-controlled greenhouse. So I assumed that it would not be hardy enough to live outdoors all of the time, nor could it handle a lot of direct sun.

It's been a month now and her plant looks beautiful. It's bushy and thriving under her care. I've shown her how to pinch back the tops of stems, instead of plucking off individual leaves, when she wants basil with her lunches or wants to make a small amount of pesto. By pinching back stems to harvest, the flowering stage of a basil plant's life is delayed by many weeks. I do think she'll be able to keep her basil going for the rest of summer as she'd hoped.

My daughter has given her basil plant the British man's name Basil (pronounced with a short -a- in the first syllable). Basil the basil. A little humor goes a long way in making days bright.