Greetings from London ! Accidental Begonia Enthusiast

I think i might have found a decent place to discuss plants....
Glad to be here

I like to collect plants that I grow from seed or propergation of which i have many photos that will soon be uploaded to share with you all.

Over the past 3 years, I have come to learn much about what plants actually require to thrive.
And through direct experience I have gained critical insights and I must say.. plants really do teach you so much about life on earth and so much more.

Im currently developing new hybrid cultivation techniques.
And looking forwards to crossing my first begonia plants.

This is a tiny baby begonia grown from an even smaller seed





This is a Rex Hybrid "Jolly Silver" in the photo below:
This was propagated via leafe cuttings as apparently this is the only way for this hybrid as it has not been documented to have ever produced flowers or seeds.
But we will hopefully see if that is actually the case ourselves within this year.

 

Hi there @Fai and

Sounds very exciting, looking forward to your future pics and updates.

 

Welcome . I'm intrigued - what is your approach to cultivating Begonia - is it vegetative or from seed.

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner Fai.

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

Hi
I have managed both methods with varying success along the way
After a couple of years and some repeated mistakes you get the hang of it

I also have plans to attempt some natural gene mixing using... grafting methods.... as i discovered accidentally....it happens to be a very good method of genetic engineering and creating new plants.
Infact nature has made new plants via this exact process in the past but using a diffrent method.

The thing is.... you cant directly choose what genetic material the plant will incorporate...(hence why controle freak academics ignore this proven technique)
The plant decides what genetic material it requires at that environment it occupies.
based on what genes the plant is expressing and a number of other factors.

Nature dose all the crossing and hard work for us organically
in a safe and ethical way!
I have witnessed this from my grafting experience
And took note of the results (New Plant Created)
with photos.

Whether this process of crossing will produce viable seeds or not will be my next experiment

I was Actually referring to developing hybrid Plant growing methods, as Im interested in a wide variety of plant species.

I have in the past managed to get many flowers the produced many seeds from the begonia plant in the photo below.
(Last year)



These are the female flowers


These are the male flowers



These are the seeds I managed to obtain.
Notice they are so small I had to use an attachment to my phone camera to use as a magnifier.

I then pelleted the seeds to make handling them easier


I then planted a some of the seeds, I picked them randomly to test the viability of the pelleted seeds.

I kept the seeds at a constant 19°C inside of an empty mini fish tank(the tank allows me to retain the moisture as it has a loose lid and allows natural light to reach the plants)


This was the result.





The plant on the right is the baby begonia you saw in the photos above, it took a year and daily checkes and a major sun burn disaster which burtnt all the leaves whis surprisingly and thankfully the plant recovered from.

finally the plant is all grown up now

The large plant on the left is the mother plant
Notice how the offspring has adapted to this particular environment.

This hybrid rex begonia is called Jolly Silver
It was propagated via leaf cutting.

The leaves were individually rolled in to an upside down cone shape and placed in professional Coco-coir medium.
A new plastic takeaway container was used as it has a lid that would aid in moisture retention.
After a while.... tiny plants began to grow from the vains of the leaf at the base.
They prefer to grow within the cone as apose to outside it if that makes sense.

Photos of this process will be added soon.

I will be posting detailed info regarding all the plants and methods mentioned above soon when i get a chance

 

Jolly Silver prefers shade that is true but you can grow it in much cooler temperatures then you think is possible

There are a few hardy Rex verities that have a myriad of color combinations.
And I believe that begonia semperflorens is quite resilient if the root bulbs are protected from frost.

but im afraid i only have experince with 3 types of begonia so far and non can withstand the frost....


i guess im going to have to test out that for myself.
I will report the results here .

More jolly photos

 

Thanks Sheal

 

Thank you very much for the friendly welcome upsydaisy

 

Thank you CanadianLori im glad to be here