Forum home› Plants
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

When to plant begonias outside

imbrennanimbrennan Posts: 20
in Plants
Last year I grew my begonia tubers in propagators and potted them up in several pots in the conservatory and then spent many days putting them outside to harden off and bringing them back in again. In the winter I wrapped each one individually in newspaper and in the 3rd week of February I put them in a wardrobe behind the airing cupboard.

They are now showing really long sturdy shoots and they need to be potted up. Some of the 2 year old tubers are about 3-4” across but as I am now recovering from a big operation I don’t have the time or energy to pot them individually and keep putting them all outside and bringing them in again as I have so many.

Where I live is shown as Zone 4 on a frost website showing the last frost to be in the second week of March. Is it safe now to plant the begonias direct into their bigger pots in the garden?


Posts

  • DimWitDimWit Posts: 553
    You should say where you are, so that "Zone 4" could be recognised. Anything like USDA zone 4, it is very unlikely your last frost should happen end of March (rather end of May!). Some calendars recommend a few garden duties (specially concerning hardier plants and indoor sowing) for 60 days before the afore-mentioned last date. In that case, you could place your sprouting begonias in a (not so cold) coldframe, but not outside. 
    Do you have horticultural fleece? You could try protecting the new shoots with (lots of) it, but even so the plants would resent the cold (unless global warming gives you a hand ).
    Now if your last frost was in March nothing will prevent you from starting begonias outside with just a little extra mulching to keep them earm.
  • imbrennanimbrennan Posts: 20
    I am in Suffolk,UK. I was looking at Gardenfocused.co.uk website which gave my town as zone 4 and mentioned March. Now I see my town is mentioned at the top of the website as second week of May!!

    I don’t have any fleece but we haven’t had frost for several weeks now. Will check another website. We have a research station locally called Brooms Barn. I will try and check with them. I have only potted up 5 pots so far.
Sign In or Register to comment.