Gorgeous Begonias That Aren't Rare or Expensive

Hey, what's up garden friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? I hope you're doing well. I'm great. Beautiful day. Just got back from a nursery. I've been moving some plants outside looking at my begonias and just had a moment. I was like I want to talk about these. I just want to sit and nerd out about some of my favorite begonias for a few minutes. Raise your hand in the comments. Hands up. Do you love begonias? Yes. Do they give you trouble? Sometimes they're problematic for people. It just depends on the types you're growing. We'll talk about that. I am no begonia expert so I'm just going to go off of how I've done things, what's worked for me, what doesn't work for me, some begonias that just don't seem to like me or I don't care for them properly, and some varieties I think are pretty freaking awesome and not super hard to find, not anything that's going to break the bank. All right, for starters, let me just pull one out so I have something pretty to look at while I talk a little bit about myself and my begonia journey. If we could get any more dramatic about plants. Yeah, the begonias. Typically, the type that I do the best with are the ones that are usually referred to as a cane type begonia, meaning that they have a nice long growth like a cane. You see some of that going on back here on this guy, see? Cane-like growth, draggling begonias. They get really tall. There are other types of begonias that are more tuberous, often called tuberous begonias. I don't do so well with those. Only times I have done well with the tuberous type begonias been when they've been in my front yard and away from me and my watering. They rot so easily and they're really snappy, so you gotta be careful with them. These are kind of snappy too, but nothing like the tuberous type begonias. And there are others as well. Those are the most common types that you're going to find. Oh, and rex begonias. Rex begonias are awesome. I have two really cool varieties I'm going to show you here in just a moment. Now, the reason I love the cane type begonias so much, and again, that's a very broad term. It just really refers to their growth habit. The reason I like them so much is because, well, their ease of growth, their speed of growth, and their height, and their foliage. They've got really awesome foliage on them. Not when you necessarily grow for the flowers, like your tuberous type begonias. Those are ones that you'll usually grow for their flowers. They have awesome, awesome flowers on them. Beautiful. The tuberous type begonias have the best flowers in my opinion. Cane begonias can have some nice flowers on them, like this dragonwing back here. They have a peduncle. The flowers hang down off this peduncle right there. See that? That's a peduncle. That's what we call that structure with the flowers dangling down. It's a fun word. I like it. Get to know peduncle. You'll use it. They get size quickly. This will be, I don't know, at least 30 inches tall probably by the end of this growing season. It'll be close to that within a couple of months. They grow quickly. I like that. That speed of growth is very rewarding, and they propagate very easily. A lot of begonias. Most begonias propagate pretty easily. So, you know, that's just across the board. It's just a fun thing with begonias that you can propagate them quickly. In fact, I did a video taking care of this begonia back here, which is a fun variety that I highly, highly, highly recommend called Double Dot. Look at that foliage. Look at it. Do you see why I love that? Look at those leaves. They look like somebody took one of those metallic-y paint pens and just dotted all over the foliage. You can see the undersides of those leaves has some nice color to it as well. That's going to vary from plant to plant. The maculata, probably the most classic of the dotted leaf begonias, and they will get flowers. Those whitey-eyed maculatas, they get a little white flower, hangs out on the inside, and it is pretty. I think it's worth growing it for that flower. If you like that more inconspicuous where you kind of got to look for it and get surprised by the flower sort of vibe. Well, in that video, I was talking about my Double Dot and some things I need to do about it. I went ahead and I cut it down to, well, I'm going to say right around here, you know, so about a 50% cut. It was really big, but very leggy. Cane begonias get pretty leggy, so that can be a thing. You got to stay on top of pruning to keep them from getting leggy, but I cut all that stuff off, and here we are about three months later, and this is all new growth up here. All that new growth is flushed out. Oh, it's so pretty. It has a really nice sheen and sparkle. I know I'm back to talking about the leaves again, but it's hard not to. Look at how pretty those are, especially when the sun hits them. In person, you can see a sparkle, but on the camera, I don't think that's going to show. Anyways, I took the cuttings from that plant, and I just shoved them in a pot, and here they are. A few months later, they were just little sticks. I did dip them in rooting hormone, which you really don't need to do. I didn't do a humidity bag over them, though I would recommend that if you're trying to prop them inside. I had these in a greenhouse for about two weeks, a little countertop greenhouse, keep the humidity in, and then I've just been watering them. See, they've gotten kind of limp and leggy. They've been inside. They haven't had much airflow, but they'll stand up over time. Need to do some pruning on that one. It doesn't matter, though, because they grow so fast. I don't mind pruning on these because it's not the end of the world. It's like, oh no, I've lost this really crazy expensive plant. No, this is, I think this was like eight bucks, which that may not always be the case. Sometimes you go to a nursery and things will cost more. I don't know how the plants are where you live, but for me, everything I'm showing here was under $12. So, I mean, that's that's saying something, right? Well, that dragon wing was 13, but it's huge. It's in a really big pot. It's a nice size plant. Okay, let me bring this one in so you can have a look at it while I talk some more about some care aspects. Look at those leaves. Look at them. Isn't that so awesome? Huge. These leaves are very large and they'll get even bigger than this over time. This has been in my grow space. I'm just now bringing it outside. It's what that new foliage looks like as it opens and unravels. Has a really dark kind of a mahogany cherry color to the undersides of the foliage and a nice green cane, a green stem. Can you see it? See that green stem? I love that contrast. This one, I'm not positive on the name of it. There are two that look just like it that I've decided are common enough that it's probably one of those and that's going to be the begonia benigo or pink dots. I think it's the benigo. The benigo usually has much larger leaves, which this one has those nice big leaves, and the pink dot is basically, it's just another maculata, but with some pink dots. The leaves aren't necessarily quite as large. That's what I've been able to gather from looking at pictures. So this one was just sold at the Home Depot. It was just on a shelf with like the foliage plants and I was like, well, that's awesome and not one you see very often. And it was probably, I'd say it was about this high when I planted it up. That was in a video a few months ago and now, you know, it did all that and that was inside, well, in the grow space under some grow lights. But these have been getting minimal care because that's how I do my best with begonias. A more hands-off approach is what works best for me with a lot of begonias. They can be prone to rot, right? They are usually said to be a plant that wants consistently moist conditions and high humidity and that is true. However, the types of begonias that I grow, these cane type begonias, again, that's a very broad term, but the dragon wings, the double dots, maculatas, those type begonias, this guy right here, I do much better with these when I let them dry in between waterings. Humidity in my grow space varies usually. I mean, it can be in the 40s, like 40%-ish if the heater is having to run full blast, but typically that's not normal. Typically it's between like 65 and 90% somewhere in there. So that seems to be plenty of humidity for them. This one had air circulation on it all winter long because there was a fan right above it blowing on it. It didn't dry the leaves up. This one, I think, just took some damage right there. Those crispy outlines, usually that's a sign of too much humidity. Sometimes that can be a water thing too. It can just mean that you're underwatering the plant when you get them dry like that. If they start to yellow from down below and get mushy, that's too much water. Lots of just general houseplant stuff, but things that might be good for you to know and potentially build lots of salts, chlorines, chloramines, those sorts of things sometimes can cause discoloration with the foliage too. Yeah, so that's something. Go ahead and chip in in the comments your experiences with how you're growing your begonias. Tips, tricks, and suggestions are always appreciated. I'm just talking about my observations, how I've grown them over the last, I don't know, 20-something years, you know. It's been better for me to, when they're inside, I should specify, when they're indoors, to let them dry usually about halfway, sometimes all of the way. There are variables. If it's really warm, which it never is in my house, then I won't let them dry as much. The warmer it is, the more consistently moist, the more humidity, all those things. The cooler it is, the more they can stay dry. Does that make sense? Hopefully? Maybe? We've got just a bunch of ward salad there. I also like that you don't have to fertilize these all that much either. Let me bring out some Rex begonias here because this, oh, this one is just beautiful. A popular one. You'll probably recognize it. It's popular enough that I grabbed two of these while I was at the nursery, and these are ones I've grown in the past. I absolutely love them, and I'm happy that they're making a comeback because I haven't even seen them as much lately. Do you know what it is? Look at that leaf. Isn't it cool? Escargo. That's the name on this one because, you know, the leaf looks like a snail. That's the name right there. This is a Rex type begonias. With the Rex type begonias, you've got really big leaves. They usually have lots of trichomes on the inside, which is that hairy growth. Look at that. I know the lighting's weird, but I specifically chose this spot because the way the sun's coming through at an angle, it helps me spotlight things, but when things aren't on that spotlight and it looks funky, doesn't that look neat? The underside right there. Only downside to that fuzziness is if you get mealybugs and pests in there, it can be a pain in the butt. I don't worry about that so much when they're outdoors. Now, Rex begonias, sometimes I have to treat these differently. I can't grow these the way I grow my cane begonias. They do want that humidity more so than my Rex begonias do, but it's not like a do or die thing. An absolute, if I don't have high humidity, they're going to die. Just the less humidity you have, the more frequently they're going to be watered. I always try and avoid getting water into the crown of the plant right in there. That's why I usually have more issues with rot. I don't usually top dress my begonia pots because that can just lead to some poor growth and some rot in the middle. I want to have airflow down in there. These will also grow fairly quickly. Not all, but, well, a lot of the ones you find more commonly, like this one. This will get pretty big fairly quickly. I find it interesting, the tag says eight inches on these. Now, I have seen these, I feel like, way bigger than eight inches. A nice big mound. Not huge, but I bet you could get to easily a one foot size mound on that. Again, comment down below if you've grown yours larger than that before, because I feel like I had one of these a few years ago and it got big. I swear it was bigger than eight inches. Just such cool plants. So, pardon the dog, something startled him. Yeah, you get it, right? You see that leaf and you go, oh, I understand the appeal. One, I love the coloration. It's that silvery mint color with the darker on the inside and that swirl. So cool. And these leaves will get bigger. Rex begonias, you grow them for those leaves, for nice big leaves. Sometimes you have rounded leaves, sometimes you have a heart-shaped leaf, and then there's some that are more like a star pattern. There's one, wow, look how metallic-y that one's looking. Sun's hitting that one just right. Southern Living has some begonias that you can usually find in a larger size in like one gallon containers for the landscape. There's one called Stirling Moon that I really like. We've talked about on the channel before. Yeah, just fun plants, but I do have a little bit more trouble with Rex begonias indoors. Outdoors, no. No issues with them. Lighting for begonias, well, that's a broad thing to say. The dragonwing begonias can take a really good amount of sunlight. That was the one I showed you with the green and the peduncle, you know, the red flowers. They have other colors of flowers. There's white and pink also, and different colors of foliage, bronze and the canary wing. Maybe I'll walk around and show you those later. I don't think you need to see them, though. You get it. It's just the same plant, but different colored flowers on them. The rexes, though, when they do flower, it looks neat, but they tend to hold it more tight on the inside. So this is when you grow for those really big, impressive leaves. And I need to water these more consistently in the house. Outside, it's a no-brainer. I cannot miss a watering with them, because they'll just, they'll wilt down and they'll die. And when they do that, they are nowhere near as forgiving as the cane begonias. The cane begonia can wilt down usually, and you water it, it'll pop right back up. The rex begonias, they'll normally pop back up, but they're going to show some damage, and they do not forgive when it comes to being overwatered. The cane type begonias, I'll just start saying maculatas, and the double dots, all these back here. When you overwater those, that can be a problem, but if you can find a nice, solid, stiff piece of stem on there, you cut it, pop it into a new container, and boom, you will have rooted a new plant, and it's like the problem never happened a few months later. You have a nice, big, full plant, and you know, that other one, you'd probably throw it away, or treat it for overwatering, but it's just so much easier to rehydrate a plant than to deal with having overwatered it. You know what I mean? The lighting, though, goodness, all over the place. I'm gonna bring out a couple more to show you while we talk about lighting. I want to keep moving so you can see the pretty plants while I talk about them. These two right here are some of my favorites, and I was so happy to see these at the nursery. Not uncommon. You'll be able to find these, probably. If you look hard enough, you know, I might have to shop around online. Look at that leaf. Look at that. Well, that's pretty similar to the other one, but still cool looking. Oh, that was $14.99. Oh, okay, the most expensive ones were $14.99. I thought these were $8.99. Okay, well, I would have bought them anyways. I still think that's a pretty decent price. These right here, the Jurassic, get that into the shade. Yeah, it's called Snowfall. It's a Rex Begonia. I don't know what the Jurassic thing, I think that's just branding on this one. It's called Snowfall. This has what I consider to be some of the most beautiful foliage on a plant that I've ever seen. You might need to see it in person. It almost looks iridescent. I mean, it is iridescent. It has an iridescent quality. It's silver and white with pink and purple on the veining, and man, does it shine. Oh, that is some shiny foliage. This one will get bigger. Tag says up to 20 inches, so that's a nice size on that one. Watering, or no, not watering. We are some types of begonias that are more of your landscape type begonias that stay rather small. They can take full sun. The surefire begonias from Proven Winners, they can take sun or shade, but they look much better in sun with afternoon shade. In my opinion, in shade, they don't grow well for me, not where I live. The cane type begonias mean the dragon wing type begonias, where they don't have any variegation on them, that one that's just all green. They can take a lot of light, but still, where I live, where we have sometimes triple digit temperatures in the summer, they do better with afternoon shade, morning light, afternoon shade. And then the more variegation they have on them, like this guy right here, I like to make sure that they get bright, direct morning sun, just for an hour or two, and then dappled filter light, like through the leaves of a tree, or maybe some sheers over your window, maybe keep them a couple of feet back from your window, and that's generally good enough for them. Now, the rex type begonias, and this is speaking very broadly, read up on whichever type you have, because sometimes things are different with the different types. These are generally considered to be a shade plant. Now, I still find, even though they're considered a plant that usually they say to keep in full shade, they also like some pretty bright, direct morning sun just for a couple of hours. You know, once you get past like 10 to 11 o'clock, depending on, you know, your placement on the planet, usually past 11, I don't want direct sun on these. That sun just becomes too intense and too, you know, too intense. It'll just burn them up, especially with the lighter color foliage. So, this one right here, that'll get morning light and a heck of a lot of shade. And I'll let you know. Moving forward in videos, you know, I'll probably tuck these into some containers. That's the plan. I'm going to mix these in with some of my tropical plants, and we will see how they do. We'll get that shade from the plant. Hopefully, in the afternoons, that'll be nice, full plants, make sure that they're getting that shade. See that, my fingers? Those are thin leaves. That's the dappledness of the lighting. Just much more prone to scorching if they get too much sun, especially if you have really dry air, leave some place with more humidity, you can get away with some more sun. And usually, the closer you are to a body of water, especially the Pacific. If you live near the Pacific, these can take more sun because you have that nice, cool air from that cool water blowing over land. Oh, this is supposed to be like a super El Nino year, so I don't really, I don't think it's going to be like that this year. Shade to part shade. How about that? That seems like a good middle ground for these guys. If they're getting too much sun, you will see. They will scorch. They'll get little holes called photo-oxidation and go ahead and move them. Or just maybe, maybe keep running that risk that maybe it was just shock from being moved into the sun. They need to be acclimated fairly slowly to a change in light. So if you're keeping your begonias in the house, then you want to be pretty slow about how you move them outside. So when I bring a begonia out, like this guy right here, this is in my grow space, it's gonna grow light, but still, that's not the real sun. Same thing with this guy back here. Those are going to go into the shade, where there's just a little bit of light in the morning and then shade throughout the day for a couple of weeks and then I'll scoot them someplace where they get some more sun and then I usually end up underneath a tree somewhere where they just naturally end up just adjusting because the tree flushes out with more and more leaves and more and more shade, but you know, it all balances out. The lighting inside when things say low light, medium light, I don't know how helpful that is to people. So the best way I would describe it with these Rex type begonias would be a spot, maybe a probably I'd say a southwest facing window, maybe a couple feet back from that window where the light isn't on it directly. So really bright for a lot of the day, even though it's a shade loving plant. In the house, it's just not the same. Wouldn't want it near the window where it's getting more than a few hours of sun going directly on the foliage, right? So a few feet back, really bright most of the day and the plant should be happy. By a few feet, I mean like at least a yard or sorry, meter for those of you who are everywhere other than here in the US, probably even two. Really nice bright room where it's not directly on them. Usually you get really nice growth on them. These cane type begonias, they can take more than that. I rarely have had issues with too much sun on them, but I also just don't usually stick them straight into the sun. Except for those dragon week type begonias, which are typically sold for landscape uses as annuals. But let me tell you, they make wonderful houseplants, the dragon wings back there with those flowers on them. They're so easy. When I have my begonias inside, like I've mentioned, I don't fuss over them. I make sure that they get a drink of water. Occasionally I'm not trying to keep them consistently moist because when I do that, they rot on me and they're just fine. They always have been. Sometimes that growth will be a little bit long and spindly if the lighting's not quite right. That's just houseplant stuff though and you just move it and hopefully you get better growth. You can cut them back like I had to do over the winter and then you end up with a nice full plant to work with a few months later. And that propagation, I'm not going to talk about propagating all these. Some of them are maybe trademarked and patented. I have no idea, but it's just so easy. Again with this, I just cut it. I dipped the stem in some rooting hormone. I trimmed off everything except for about two or three stems on here and then watered it. And now boom, plants right here. This one's not looking that great. I mean it's nice and long. Gosh, that's so freaking pretty. It's nice and long, but it's a weak stem, so I'll probably pinch this one. Actually I can just do it right now. Pinch it right here and just take that. Use clippers if you can so you have a nice clean cut. And then I would take, let me see, let's pop that leaf off and maybe pop that one off and stick that right back down to the soil. That'll root. It'll grow. You don't need to use the rooting hormone with begonias. I just did because it was sitting right next to me in that video. It's not going to hurt. It shouldn't hurt. As long as you're using it properly, it should be fine. There are trailing begonias too. All different types. Begonia, there are so many different types. I just wanted to talk about some that I really enjoy growing that have been really easy for me. Now this one I haven't actually grown. The snowfall one, that one I haven't grown. But the argyle, keep wanting to say argyle, escargot for rex begonia, they're pretty sturdy. And then all of these back here are great. The dragon wings are so nice. You can put them out in the landscape and you have lots and lots of flowers. Hummingbirds absolutely love them. And then you just lift them up and bring them in the house during the winter. And they may look a little junky by the time spring comes around, but you bring them outside and boom, they flush back out and they look great again. And that's the same thing with really all of these except for the rexes. I do believe there's a way to dormant store the rex begonias, but I've never tried that before. So I'm not going to talk about y'all can let me know down in the comments if you've ever done any dormant storage with your rex type begonias, some of your favorite types of begonias to grow. There are some that are really spectacular with some amazing like blue, like dark black blue foliage and some that are just really just crazy intensity to them. And lots of variegated types that look very similar to this one, but cost like, I don't know, well over a hundred dollars for the variegated angel wing type. That's the thing too. We have the dragon wing, the angel wing, that's the whole, that's just all those different things. That's why I just said cane begonias. You know what I'm talking about. It's the growth habit, not just the leaves on them because the care form is fairly similar. Now these are all pretty easy to obtain. I don't know what your nurseries are like where you live, but there are by no means rare or hard to get. These aren't plants where you need to go on Etsy and spend, you know, a hundred bucks on a little tissue cultured something or other. No, no, no. These are pretty simple, fairly easy to come by and relatively inexpensive and they grow well and they're rewarding. You can use these in your hanging baskets and then bring them in the house and make a wonderful house plant. I love plants that have that additional usage to them. So it's not just an annual that's coming outside for nice foliage. There's nothing wrong with that, but I feel better about it when I go, oh, I can lift that, bring it inside and have it as a house plant and then bring it back out the next year. We can just keep going back and forth and back and forth. I love that. So many awesome ones to choose from. Again, what are some of your favorite types, some of your favorite varieties? Let us know down in the comments, anything I forgot to talk about. I know I didn't mention fertilizing. It's because I don't really fertilize my begonias all that often. When I do, I try and stick to a half strength all purpose fertilizer during the growing season. When they're outdoors, they'll be getting hit with fertilizer. They should be hit every two weeks, but they probably won't with a half strength. But if I were doing it this way, I should be doing it. And that's the way I would do it. They can get root burned fairly easily from having too much fertilizer. So as long as it's just nice and organically rich, I like to use a continuous release, a mild one that usually does the trick. While fertilizing is oftentimes important. Sometimes we forget to mention in gardening that it's mostly necessary when you're trying to compensate for lighting and soil. If you have a good organic mix and proper light, the plant should be good. When things are in containers, that's just not reality. You're going to need to fertilize. Having the proper biome going on around those roots that they would have in the ground in a container, it's not likely, especially if you don't want your house to be full of like fungus gnats and stuff like that. So yeah, all purpose fertilizer. I like to dilute it. So maybe even down to a quarter strength if you're worried about having some sort of root burn. Wouldn't hurt, right? Nothing to it. Doesn't have to be complicated at all. I hope everybody's doing well. Get you off the tripod there. Having a great day, great life and everything's just going absolutely beautifully for you.