Episode 1 Introduction
It was Sunday morning on the 16th. November heading north on
the M6 towards Scotland at a fair rate of knots with Vincent Potts & Bob
Bryce, when Bob asked me to do this Diary for the National Begonia
Society website – I was stuck, with no place to run and with a lot of
trepidation I agreed to do it. After speaking with Brain Simmons I felt
a little more at ease. So here we are.
In my next instalment I
will go more into depth about myself and set up.
November / December
This is where I am at present.
All my main tubers have had their final brush off and have been
de-scabbed. When I de-scab a tuber I dry the wound off with a bit of
kitchen roll then lightly dust with Sublimed Sulphur. I found that when
I dusted the wound with normal sulphur it formed a hard scab over the
wound resulting in losses from rot. I found that if you looked closely
you could see little white fungal hairs growing out of the re-scabbed
wound. If you were lucky enough and caught it early enough you could
re-scab a tuber and it would come away just like the original scab did
and you could save your tuber. However if you miss it and find a mass of
growth of white fungal hairs on a pre-scabbed wound you will be lucky to
save it as the brown rot has already started to go back in to the tuber
from the scab.
This is why checking your tubers whilst in storage on a regular basis
will save you from tuber loses if acted on quickly otherwise when you
begin starting your tubers up you find good looking tubers just full of
brown rot. Since I have been using sublime of sulphur I have never
suffered from rot from where the scab has come from. The stems on my
cuttings are all falling off by themselves now, leaving a lot of
distorted 4 inch pots. That is a very heart-warming sight for this time
of year.
Disaster of the year and a lesson to all – I sprayed my plants with
Pravado Ultimate Bug Killer and left them, thinking nothing of it. How
wrong I was. Within a week most of the leaves on my plants looked
scorched. After a lot of panicking and praying they carried on growing
and I still managed to get some decent plants and flowers later on in
the year.
Sunday 16 November Bob B, Vincent P & I set off for our usual trip
to the Scottish Begonia Society Meeting via Bert Nelson's home at
Carluke where we are always made welcome by Bert and his good wife
Margaret, and let me not forget well fed as well.Whilst at Bert’s he
kindly gave me a cutting of a begonia that I have been after for years.
At the meeting we were made very welcome as per usual by all the
Scottish members there. When I got home I put the cutting from Bert’s on
the kitchen window sill to try and take it through winter. Let me tell
you conflicts between countries have started for less when my partner
Joanne saw it. After some delicate negotiations it is still there in the
corner, out of the way still growing.
Late November I took some very late cuttings from a couple of very
special plants given to me by Alan Bryce just before he went to Spain.
With the issues of the Kitchen Window sill, I tried to bribe my daughter
to let me rent her window sill. Luckily she said I could for free – so
now x4 cuttings are living there for now, and looking well.
Well that’s me for 2014. See you all in 2015
