CULTURAL DIARY   2017

Ron Aldous

Growing Begonias My way

October

Hi everyone it's that time again for me to put pen to paper and bring you up to date on what's been going on at my place.
Well I don't know what the weather has been like with you all but September hasn't been all that special for us here in  North Wales, dull showery and for all but odd days the temperature has been cooler than usual for this time of the year.
This month for me is one of getting ready for shutting down, removing all the flowers left on after the shows and the time that I have to move my Begonias around out of one end of the greenhouse in to the other end to flower.  It is around about this time I will be stopping watering them even though the are still drying out three days after I've watered them.  I've kept the greenhouse fully open up to now and will probably leave it like that until the weather gets worse.
I have not seen any sign of mildew so far but I have had a bit of stem rot but that for me isn't unusual. The job now is to inspect the plants regularly for the logs and any leaves that have fallen, and it's surprising how much I pick up every other day or so.

As you all know by now my long lasting other passion are my Chrysanthemums and over the last two weeks I've been bringing them into the greenhouse to flower at the end of October/November. I've had a setback with them it being White Rust the scourge of chrysanths, what that means after growing the best plants for some years I won't be able to show them, can't risk infecting other people's stuff  so I'm a bit shall we say not happy after growing them since taking the cuttings in January. One thing I can think myself lucky about is the rust only affects Chrysanths.

This  Friday is the last meeting for the North West Area in Chorley so myself Barry and two other growers will be on our way up the M6 hoping we don't get in any heavy traffic, fingers crossed. Normally we would be calling on Bob (Bryce) to have a look around and a natter, we are always made welcome and Joan never misses to put on a lovely spread but they have gone on holiday so it will be a straight run up to Chorley.

Well that's all for now hope every thing is going well for you all.
                                                                                                                    Cheers  Ron. 

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