BATTLING TUBEROUS BEGONIAS
Soon, very soon, I will have a million and one things to do out there, but not today. I'm a gardener who likes to garden in comfort. We are now on our way to mid September 2012 and it is so cold out there I can see my breath in clouds of smoke. Dragon Lady! I had to water my tomato plants, which are in pots, and the hanging baskets, and the troughs and was almost tempted to mix some hot water in with the cold because I thought that the plants might die of shock with the temperature of the water straight out of the outside pipe. I've got my central heating on now inside the house. I think it is the northerly wind that is causing such a chill.
When the weather is dreadful, the plants just have to cope. Soon I will repot some of the pelargoniums to overwinter indoors and I have spotted a couple of tuberous begonias that are a complete surprise. In the summer of 2011 I grew several in my hanging baskets and, like I always do, I turned the spent soil from the baskets into the garden border this spring and chopped them into the ground with a spade. I thought the begonias had died off during the winter months of 2011 and early 2012. Imagine my surprise when some of the tuberous begonias survived such treatment. One is actually in flower (see above). I feel obliged, after their struggle to survive, to bring them indoors and nurture them over this winter. It must be the mother nature in me. Watch me go and kill them off with kindness. :D
It has quite astonished me how ruthless you can be with plants, even inadvertently, and they will still survive. That's true nature, isn't it, struggling to survive?
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| A surviving tuberous begonia from last year hiding in the border |
When the weather is dreadful, the plants just have to cope. Soon I will repot some of the pelargoniums to overwinter indoors and I have spotted a couple of tuberous begonias that are a complete surprise. In the summer of 2011 I grew several in my hanging baskets and, like I always do, I turned the spent soil from the baskets into the garden border this spring and chopped them into the ground with a spade. I thought the begonias had died off during the winter months of 2011 and early 2012. Imagine my surprise when some of the tuberous begonias survived such treatment. One is actually in flower (see above). I feel obliged, after their struggle to survive, to bring them indoors and nurture them over this winter. It must be the mother nature in me. Watch me go and kill them off with kindness. :D
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| Another surviving tuberous begonia from last year. |
It has quite astonished me how ruthless you can be with plants, even inadvertently, and they will still survive. That's true nature, isn't it, struggling to survive?