Tropicals & Tender Perennials: photoshop and begonias, 0 by hcmcdole

hcmcdole wrote:
Gessie,

All my aluminum pans came from Sam's Club. You can get 15 big trays for around $10 or 30 half size ones for about the same price. The bad thing is there are no lids but the good thing is they are heavier duty than the ones you get at the grocery store. Being heavy duty means you can add gravel and pots and lift the whole thing without too much fear of it collapsing (be careful though because it can give if too heavy).

Jackie,

Show us some of your canes. I have found a lot of mine that I repotted didn't have a good root ball - maybe that is why they are so poor. The ones with lots of leaves had a good root ball so I put them back in the pot and added some soil to the top along with a touch of fertilizer. I'm hoping that by repotting will encourage lots of roots.

One thing I think I'm learning is to cut away most of the old potting mix from the roots so that whatever I use for the new mix is homogeneous from top to bottom. In the past I would just stick the plant with the old root ball (maybe tease the older roots) into a bigger pot with new potting soil. Later on I found that the plant's roots never went anywhere other than stay in place in the old soil. I knew that from planting in the ground but never thought about it for container plants.

Here is amphioxus (got this at the LA convention). An old fish bowl came in handy but it wasn't tall enough so I added the salad bowl lid to the top. This begonia can be propagated from a leaf - one leaf has already sent up a couple of new plantlets so I put a couple more leaves down in hopes they will do the same thing.