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November
As mentioned in my
October Diary I was
looking forward to our area meeting but unfortunately it had to be
cancelled as there was a report of a fire at the venue. I hope you did
see the message on the web site advising this cancellation if you were
thinking of coming along for the first time. The National Begonia
Society AGM will be on January 10th. at the new venue
unfortunately I will not be able to attend, hopefully I’ll have more luck
with the Draw this year. The Central section meeting and tuber auction
will be later in the year at this time I do not know where this will
take place.
There is less and less of the plants each day making plenty of
material for the compost heap which the resident worms appear to enjoy
as I’ve never seen so many as this year. I have got a couple of the
plastic compost bins which are a bit awkward to empty which I’ve done
over the years a couple of times spreading the really good compost over
the garden borders which soon brings the local Robin round with his keen
eye sight to enjoy his pickings also giving me a tuneful song. Bob Bryce
phoned and commented on my October Diary and gave his procedure for
drying his tubers although he uses loam and I a mixture of loam and
multipurpose which tends to be more forgiving if over watered. Taking on
board his comments and looked inside some of my pots to make sure the
roots were not too wet as the compost on the surface may look dry and
could be hiding all sorts of problems causing roots to rot if indeed wet
inside. Trying about fifteen pots I found only one pot to be too wet and
was surprised to find two vine weevils in one pot which I must have
missed treating with the provado. Having removed most of the compost
from these tubers will leave them to dry out before cleaning the tubers
completely with a soft brush before storing in the trays
Fig 1 leaving all the other tubers
Fig 2 to die down in their own time.
I have since removed the compost from several more pots and will let
them dry off and the skins firm up prior to cleaning with the old worn
down 1 “paint brush which seems to work well on a few trial plants.
Having fitted all the bubble insulation in the large greenhouse the
temperature has not dropped, never mind it’s better to be safe as
mentioned I had already had it stored so no costs involved just an hour
to attach. The cuttings are still growing steadily in the propagator
which is in the small greenhouse and none of these have shown any signs
of dying down. The weather has been so warm I would think the heating
elements haven’t been on that much so energy costs should be down this
autumn season.
20th. Cleaned off about twenty tubers with the
old paint brush then attached labels with elastic bands
Fig 3 then
moving them from greenhouse into the garage. That’s a benefit of having
electric lighting in the greenhouse you can have an hour down the
greenhouse when you get home from work as I still work full time and
tend to go fishing most weekends. Fig 4
shows the tubers which I have removed from their compost and drying off
prior to cleaning and labelling. Fig 5
shows the remaining plants not yet died off enough to clean off the
compost from around their tubers, I would think another week should be
long enough and I can then clean these off.
22nd. I cleaned the majority of my
tubers today which took me five hours and I didn’t even have a cup of
tea it wasn’t a bad day with the sun coming out for a short time. The
older tubers are getting quite large so only six went into each tray
Fig 6. Last winter I stored the
tubers in flower pots I thought using these trays would give better air
circulation whilst in storage also keep them apart from each other. I
noticed the weather going to turn cold so I got stuck in and put all the
cleaned off tubers into trays and stored them in the garage
Fig 7 the remainder I moved them
into the small greenhouse swapping the heater from the large greenhouse
leaving it empty of begonias for the winter.
30th. The cold weather was only two frosts Monday
and Tuesday and back to mild nights .I am waiting for about fifteen
plants to die down and that will be all tubers harvested with just my
cutting tubers in the propagator. |
