Some TLC

I love to garden. When we moved into this house, there was only one small garden under the front dining room bay window. We extended that one by about oh, 15-20 feet in length and added three more gardens in the backyard. We also planted three trees (one of which is an apple tree, yummy!).

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We have several pots sitting on steps and up on our deck, begonias are my go to plants for my pots. I absolutely love, love, love begonias, they are just so very beautiful. Nice, thick leaves, vibrant in colour, just so very lovely. The only problem I have is that I'm lousy and I mean lousy at storing the bulbs over the winter months. I'm definitely doing something wrong! I have good intentions, however each spring, when I go to repot those bulbs, they are dead….no good. Mushy, mouldy,

not-going-to-sprout-a-thing kind of bulb

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So here I am, reading up on just how to take care of these tender garden bulbs…..now I'm sharing a few of these tips with you!

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First, you want to dig those bulbs out once the leaves begin to turn yellow or around the time of the first frost. Dig around the perimeter of the foliage. Keep in mind that the bulb is most likely bigger than when you planted it in the spring, so you may want to give yourself a little bit of extra room to play with…..slicing the bulb with your spade is not something you want to do. Cut back the stem a little bit (not entirely) and remove any rotted areas with a sharp knife (be careful now!).

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Remove as much of the excess dirt as possible. Go ahead and place the bulbs in a cool dry spot, somewhere that they will not freeze for about a week. After a week, the dirt should clump off (if small amounts of dirt remain in the creases of the bulb, don't worry), and the remaining stem should fall off easily.

now this is where I've been going wrong…..

They then suggest to place the bulbs in a sturdy cardboard box on top of dry peat moss or newspaper. The key is that the peat moss/newspaper will keep the bulbs from drying up (and shrivelling). You could also use vermiculite.

I always left them in a paper bag in our main floor laundry room….apparently this, is a big, big, big no no. They recommend putting the box in the basement, a crawl space or the garage, as long as it doesn't go below freezing, but they do need to be in a pretty cool space.

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Now this also goes for other bulbs too, like cannas, gladioluses, callas and dahlias, just to name a few. And this only applies to those zones where you have freezing temps during the winter months. And there you have it! Now, hopefully we'll all have beautiful begonias sprouting from these stored bulbs next year. Fingers crossed!

do you garden? what is your favourite, or one of your favourite plants?

Cheers,