peppysis: bulbous blooms

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

bulbous blooms

I tell you what... the flower child that I am sure did enjoy the bulbous (or tuberous) begonias on the porch this year. Our porch, on three sides of our house, extends ten feet out from the house and is covered by our roof so direct sunshine all day does not happen for my flowers. This is where the bulb type begonias came in very handy and beautifully because they are shade lovers. Direct sunlight will actually burn the leaves and bloom. I had one pot at the top of the front steps and wound up having to move it back out of so much light.

Here it is November 20th (when I typed this post) and all of my begonias are still blooming. I need to take them in and over winter the bulbs but I just hate to when they are still so pretty. They are under the porch cover so frost can't get to them and yellow them on out. I may set them on the front steps tonight to get the process rolling. I've heard that you don't want the bulbs out during a hard freeze and that we will have tomorrow night with temperatures dipping into the twenties. Ick!

I had such good luck with these easy plants that I looked online for another source and found it pretty quick. I don't know why I had a problem finding tuberous begonias back when I was on the hunt for them. I reckon I was just looking in the wrong places. I bought some today, that will ship to me in the Spring, to add to my collection. I got two new kinds of begonias, a beautiful new to me caladium and a bag of bulbous dahlias to try. I have a set of caladium bulbs that I have set out for the last three years. They are what got me started with the "bringing in the bulbs" movement that I seem to have. But hey... why buy new sets of flowers to plant every year when you can just pull out the same bulbs from year to year? They are beautiful and so easy to care for.

These are the ones I just bought from edenbrothers.com.

Apricot Lace Begonia