Begonia care guide
We all know and love the Begonia. The most common Begonia is the maculata, and the rex kinds.
They have stunning leaves, and delicate, but cute flowers.
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WATERING :
Begonia are generally easy to take care of. A lot of them require high humidity and water atleast once a week, except for the Begonia in my terrarium! I never water those, the soil stays moist in there. My Begonia usually start to look a bit droopy when it needs a water, so make sure you soak it when the soil is dry.
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LIGHT REQUIREMENTS :
I have all my Begonia under grow lights, and they seem to do well there. They also get natural light of course, and i recommend putting it infront of a window, where it doesn´t get too much direct sunlight.
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BLOOM :
Flowers are a good sign! You can keep them for the sake of looking pretty, or you can go and pollinate them. For a male flower (has a yellow half-circle in the middle, that's the part where the pollen is) to release its pollen, you want to mimick the vibrations of a bee. You can use a tuning fork, electric toothbrush or pretty much anything that vibrates. Hold it against the flower and it'll release pollen!
You can freeze pollen in a little ziplock bag if you want to pollinate a female flower. Yes, you can cross Begonia but make sure that the chromosome levels are similar, otherwise the seedlings can be very weak, the seeds won't sprout or there'll be no seeds at all.
you can easily recognize a female Begonia flower by looking behind the flowers. Is there a triangle-shaped thing and does the yellow part of the flower looks like a race track that goes to every corner of the world? That's a female flower. Make sure the pollen gets all in there, and after a while you can harvest the seeds.
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PROPAGATION :
Once you´ve taken the cutting, you can either put it in moist soil/sphagnum moss, or put them in a glass of water. I prefer using the water propagation method.
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PICTURES :
