Wax begonia care8/8/2023 Just like in a hospital, diseases can easily spread if conditions aren’t kept sanitary. You can learn more about controlling thrips in our guide. If you happen to see thrips, you can use an insecticidal soap such as this 24-ounce, ready-to-use spray from Garden Safe, available on Amazon. With their specialized mouthparts, thrips pierce leaves to feed, leaving discolored feeding marks and black frass in their wake. Ranging in hue from translucent yellow or white to dark brown or black, thrips are tiny, slim insects that sport fringed wings. Sprays of insecticidal soaps and horticultural oil work to eradicate them as well.įor a homemade DIY concoction, you can fill an old spray bottle with a mixture of dish soap and water – add one tablespoon of soap per quart of water – then spritz it directly onto infested plant surfaces. Once you spot these pests, get rid of them by dipping cotton swabs in rubbing alcohol, then applying the swabs directly to the bugs. To manage mealybugs, you’ll need to check your plants for them regularly. They also excrete honeydew, which can attract ants and lead to sooty mold infection. Here’s a fun fact-slash-tip: by cracking down on unwanted insects, you can also crack down on unwanted disease, since some bugs actually vector pathogens! MealybugsĬovered in a white and mealy wax, mealybugs are small, soft-bodied insects that measure less than a fifth of an inch long.įorming clustered colonies on infested stems and leaves, mealybugs suck the sap from infested tissues, which can stunt the plant’s growth. But annoying ones? Most definitely a possibility. x semperflorens-cultorum doesn’t typically suffer from serious insect problems. These plants are actually resistant to rabbits and deer! Insects Great news: herbivores aren’t a huge concern with wax begonias. Let’s discuss some potential threats to a wax begonia’s health, shall we? Herbivores Rounding out our list with bright red blooms, Harmony ‘Scarlet’ is a bronze-leaved variety with a mature height and spread of up to eight inches.Īlong with the other members of the Harmony series, this cultivar has especially sturdy flowers that will still bloom vibrantly in spite of heat and rain. If you’re interested, you can purchase some pelleted Cocktail ‘Gin’ seeds – as well as other Cocktail varieties – from True Leaf Market. With hints of red in both the blooms and the foliage, these give off a fiery aura in the landscape. Keep the cutting in a warm, well-lit spot indoors. Remove the leaves from the cutting’s lower half, and submerge the de-leafed section in a tall, narrow container of water. Take a cutting three to four inches in length, making your cut about half an inch below the lowest node. In spring or summer, select a healthy-looking stem, one with several nodes and no flowers or flower buds. At that point, they’re ready for transplanting! From Stem Cuttings Place the containers near a sunny window and continue to keep the medium moist like before.Īfter the last frost comes to pass, leave the containers outside for 30 to 60 minutes before bringing them back inside.Īdd an additional half hour to a full hour of outdoor exposure time each day until your seedlings can spend a full day outside. Once the seedlings develop a set of true leaves, they can be moved into their own three-inch containers, each filled with similar media as the tray. After the seeds germinate, in three to four weeks or so, remove the plastic wrap and bottom heat. Once you’ve purchased your pelleted seeds, you’ll want to sow them about 12 weeks before your area’s final frost date in spring.įor a heat mat with a six-foot power cord that’s available in three different sizes, check out Gardener’s Supply.īe sure to keep the media around the seedlings moist. Since the seeds of a wax begonia are practically dust-like in their natural state, utilize pelleted ones instead to make them easier to see, handle, and sow. You can gather wax begonia seeds, but I wouldn’t recommend it. When it comes to wax begonia propagation, you’ve got three potential avenues to take: sowing seeds, taking stem cuttings, or straight-up transplanting. Wax begonias remain beloved thanks to their compact size, uniform growth, heat tolerance, and long blooming period.īut enough talk – it’s time to learn how to grow and care for these beauties yourself! Propagation In 2009, its total production value was 36 million dollars in the United States, making it the country’s fourth most popular bedding plant at the time. x semperflorens-cultorum has since taken the world by storm: as of 2012, it was the most widely-grown begonia in the world. The name “semperflorens-cultorum” was coined to describe this new, ever-flowering group of hybrids, and the rest is history.ī. cucullata – the OG wax begonia, if you will – was the first commercially-introduced wax begonia, way back in 1945.
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