Episode 121: Begonias part two

Begonia bests (from left): Begonia masoniana at Lullingstone Castle; B. sizemoreae on the Dibleys stand at the Chelsea flower show; B. ‘Green Sparkles’ at Lullingstone Castle; B. ‘Saigon’. Photographs: Jane Perrone.

Transcript

Episode 121

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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast episode 121. It's Begonias Part Two! We'll be hearing more from Steve Rosenbaum about how to take care of the wonderful foliage that is the Begonia genus and I'll also be joined by Scott Zona, palm expert, to answer a question about a curiously skinny palm.

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Jane: Thanks to new Patreons, Heather, Monica and Marianne this week. Great to have you on board. I know Christmas is an expensive time of year, so I'm really super-grateful that you've decided to join the clan of people making a monthly donation to On The Ledge. If you'd like to join them, then do click on to my show notes at JanePerrone.com , scroll down the episode notes and you'll find the information at the bottom. Just a bit of housekeeping about the Christmas period, I will be putting an episode out over Christmas. I'm not sure when it'll drop. It'll just depend on when I can get to work on it because as usual, sickness and lots of Christmas commitments are crowding in on me at the moment, but I will get a Christmas episode out at some point. What I will say, is that it's not a normal episode. It's going to be something a bit different. Some of you might love it, some of you might be totally nonplussed! We shall see. So, subscribe to On The Ledge to make sure that you get the chance to listen and I'll be back to normal on January 10^th^, for a normal episode.

By now, all Patreons who donate $5 or more and who gave me their postal address should have received their festive card from On The Ledge. If you haven't, then do drop me a line and I can check what's going on with that. It was a real joy to write those cards and remember all the happy conversations I've had with all of those Patreons and I hope you like them too. I shall be putting up the image that went on the front of the card just before Christmas so everyone can have a look because it's an absolutely gorgeous illustration of me and Wolfie surrounded by plants, done by the very talented Ciara Long, who is an illustrator.

But without further ado, let's hear again from Steve Rosenbaum because I had so many questions from listeners about Begonias and it's time for us to get some answers. So if you haven't listened to episode 120, the first part of the Begonia episodes, then do go back and listen to that now because it'll make much more sense that way. If you have, here's a reminder about who Steve Rosenbaum is. He is the founder of the wonderful Steve's Leaves nursery in Texas and a grower of many a fine Begonia. I begin by asking him to talk about some of the more select Begonias that he sells at Steve's Leaves.

Steve: One of our bestsellers -- it's probably our best-selling Begonia - it's one called Pavanina. It's also called the Peacock Begonia. Keep in mind these plants, without human intervention, either these plants, or if they're a hybrid, their parents, grow somewhere in nature without our help. If we're having trouble with a plant, we need to try to figure out what it naturally would have and what we can do to simulate that in our homes. Pavanina, there are a lot of failures with that plant, and we try to warn people that it has to have very high humidity. The humidity makes it the most challenging and they have to have the correct lighting and watering, as we talked about. There are some other amphioxus, there are some others that we grow. That one also needs very high humidity.

Back to the Pavonina. One of the things that bothers me about that is I'll look online and see people selling that and they only show pictures of it. What it's known for, its claim to fame, is if you take a flash picture just right, it'll come out in iridescent blue and very pretty, but a lot of the online sellers will only show you what it looks like if you capture it with a flash picture just right and that's very misleading because the plant looks nothing like that. I's not an iridescent blue in normal daylight. So our main picture on the website at stevesleaves.com we show what it normally looks like, the colouration, because that's something that really rubs me the wrong way that a lot of other people do. They know they can sell more if they mislead people, so people do need to know it does not have that iridescent colour in normal daylight. But it is a really cool novelty and it is rewarding if you can get the pictures right and everything and have the iridescence come out.

Jane: Completely, but you're absolutely right, there's so much crazy stuff going on out there. I've seen succulents that have been given a weird filter so they look purple and all kinds of crazy things going on and people unfortunately fall for this stuff. But I suppose that's a more subtle version, as in: "Yes, the plant could look like this, but your plant is not going to look like this to the naked eye without intervention." You really do have a lovely range of Begonias and there's so many tempting things on your website that make me want to give some of these Begonias a go again. The one that does really well for me, and I don't even know what it's classified as, is Begonia luxurians. I guess I love it because it doesn't really look like a Begonia. It looks so unusual and I found that, as somebody who has killed a lot of Begonias, I find that one particularly easy to grow.

Steve: That's good to hear that you're having good luck with that. There are Begonias that mimic other plants. There's one called foliosa, that's called the Fern Leaf Begonia. There's other Begonias that look even more like a fern. There are Begonias that I've seen that look almost like a Hoya but you know they're not when you see them bloom and they have the typical begonia flower.

Jane: They are such a diverse family, aren't they? There are some incredible ones. If somebody was going to start with Rexes, for example, is there an easy Rex that you can start with, that's widely available, that you'd recommend people giving a go to get into Rexes and get started without having that experience that I've had so many times, of losing them or thinking you've lost them.

Steve: One of the ones that's my favourite, but partly is the way the colouring is, is a variety called Fireworks, by Michael Kartuz out of California. He's the hybridizer. So that's one of my favourites, but it's not necessarily easier than all of the other varieties. Once you get the conditions right, that opens it up to growing lots and lots of types of Rexes.

Jane: My rule is, if I really love something then I will take really good care of it. If I'm not so interested then it tends to get ignored more. So the more you love something the more care you're prepared to take with it.

Steve: That sounds like human nature, yes.

Jane: Yes, exactly. Let's get on to the subject of propagation. As you say, it's a great and fun thing to do with Begonias. I had one listener who got in touch to say she had a white rhino begonia and two different nurseries had told her that it was very difficult to propagate. Is that just nurseries trying to keep themselves in business or are there any Begonias that are more difficult to propagate than others because I thought they were all quite easy?

Steve: I assume she's referring to Begonia venosa and that one is rather difficult. It's easy to over-water. Yes, I would agree it's a challenging Begonia. It's very slow-growing. We very seldom have it. I don't know if we have it in our collection. I think we do. Very slow. It loves drier conditions. Now, I've heard of people trying to propagate it by seed and in general they're not easy to come by, the seeds. You have to be careful online, a lot of people are selling whatever you want it to be, but they're bogus. But with Begonia seeds, they're like dust. They're very, very fine, so you want tosurface-sow them. What I prefer, is on some fine or medium vermiculite and surface-sow, sprinkle the seeds on that. Some people like using just a seedling mix or some people will use a regular potting soil and top it with the seedling mix and then you surface-sow it and you have to keep the surface moist. If it dries out, then they're not going to germinate.

Jane: What are the easy Begonias to propagate in terms of leaf cuttings or leaf petiole cuttings. Begnoia Rexes seem to be quite fun to propagate. What's your technique with those?

Steve: Well, the Rexes and other rhizomatous-type Begonias are normally done from leaves. If they have a rhizome, if you have an older Beefsteak Begonia and you have giant rhizomes all over the place, you can cut the rhizomes up. Every time you make a cut you are taking a chance that disease organisms could move in, so it's a little bit risky, but some people prefer cutting up the rhizomes. We prefer to do leaves and I prefer leaf wedges. There's an old fashioned way of taking a leaf and making slits across the veins and then putting the leaf flat against the soil to root in. I've never been crazy about that method but the leaf wedges work well for us.

Jane: How long does it take to get from a leaf wedge to a viable young plant? Is it quite a quick process?

Steve: Some of our newer hybrids, we're able to, in about ten weeks, a little over two months, we can have something. Most of them, you're looking at a couple of months before they start producing new growth. Typically, Rexes take about three to five months from leaf to when we can sell them, sometimes longer.

Jane: Is really high humidity part of the deal when you're trying to propagate? You need to give the plants, perhaps a terrarium or a covering, that means they're in a high-humidity situation, particularly if you're trying to grow them indoors?

Steve: Correct, yes. You definitely want to keep the humidity up. Some people, if they don't have a terrarium or an inexpensive way to make a terrarium-like environment for the plant, take a plastic bag and put it over the pot. You can use a wire coat hanger to make a frame for it or some other kind of wire, or anything you have - chopsticks to hold the bag up - whatever you want to do to make a little tent that seals that and you want to keep that humidity in.

Jane: So, rhizomatous Begonias, like the Beefsteak Begonia, which I have to say is one of my favourites, just because I can grow it really well. - I've got a huge one that's really gone nuts, so I like that one just because I can make it look nice - so I can cut rhizomes off that? Are there any other techniques for other Begonias that I could try? We talked about seed. Have we missed any other techniques that you might use?

Steve: Most people don't have a tissue culture lab at home, but they can be grown from tissue culture. One of my first Begonias when I was a teenager. Someone gave me two leaves with a petiole attached and it was a rhizomatous, but it had very thick petioles and I planted one cutting in soil and one in water and the one in water rooted better. So you can sometimes start them in water but some people say that when they try to root things in water they just rot, so it just depends on your conditions.

Jane: I find it's hit and miss with that. Sometimes, if it works, it is the easiest method and less stressful method. I guess if you've got lots of leaves, it's worth a gamble.

Steve: There's different variations of the wedge of leaf propagated Begonias. One method is sometimes called cone cuttings, where you make a cone out of the leaf and stick that in the soil. I one time saw someone do what they call 'confetti'. I've only seen this done once. Confetti cuttings. They took a Rex, or some sort of rhizomatous, and they cut along the veins, they cut strips, and they did little quarter inch square pieces that they sprinkled on sterilised sand in a jar, in a mason jar. They sealed up the top and every one of those sprouted a new plant. It was very novel. It's a slow way to go, because each of those it's practically like growing from seed, takes quite a while, whereas if you use a larger wedge, you're going to get a larger plant faster. They're all things that people come up with. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Jane: Yes, well, I guess that's the thing. If you've got the material, you can try out different methods and see what works and that's part of the fun. I've just realised the thing that we haven't mentioned so far is potting soil for Begonias. Is regular house plant potting soil, that you might buy in a bag at the garden centre, going to be fine for these plants, or do they need any amendments or something different?

Steve: Okay, how many hours do we have to discuss this!? I'm just kidding! Some people really get technical with that. So, in our case, we have thousands of varieties of plants, many hundreds of varieties of Begonias in particular, and we use the same soil for everything, whether it's a succulent, a Begonia, whatever it is. We sometimes experiment and add a little bark or something to a mix, but in general we use the same thing for everything. It's just a peat / perlite mix that has a wetting agent and is Ph adjusted with lime by the manufacturer of the soil mix. So in most cases they can grow it in whatever they want to grow. I have a friend in California named Randy who gets quite technical and he grows a lot of very rare Begonias and he will find out where it naturally grows. If it grows off a lime stone cliff, he'll add pieces of lime stone in there and he makes a real science out of it. We can't do that for so many varieties, it's kind of sink or swim, they have to adjust to the way we grow things or we just don't grow it. To answer your question, the general potting mix should be okay. Our preferences are a peat moss based mix with some perlite for drainage.

Jane: That's the thing, unless you're going to go down the very specialist route, then hopefully the same mix should work fairly well for most of the things that you're going to be growing commonly.

Steve: There are people who grow in garden soil and people who grow in compost and many of those are successful as well.

Jane: It's hard to replicate somebody else's conditions entirely and sometimes that can work brilliantly for one person. I went to a place on holiday earlier this year and they had the most incredible Rex begonias in this cottage in Wales. I was going: "What are you doing? How are you ...!?" and they weren't houseplant people at all, but they had these amazing Rex Begonias and I was just in shock and I couldn't really work out what they were doing to make such beautiful plants, but I wish I'd found out their secret because they were just absolutely beautiful.

Steve: Once of the nice things about growing plants is that it's not set in stone. If it was so predictable, it wouldn't be a challenge. So I think that makes it interesting and the experimentation part of it, I think, is one of the most rewarding parts, trying to see what works.

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Jane: We'll be back with Steve shortly for more Begonia info, but now it's time for Question of the Week. I had to call on an expert this week to answer the question, which is about a palm. So, guest of the show, Scott Zona, was the man I needed to speak to. I gave him a call earlier this week and here's what we discussed.

Jane: Scott, thank you for joining me to answer this question from Milda who has sent a picture of what she describes as a skinny palm, I've sent you this picture. She's got a problem with it because it is so skinny, I think, but first of all, my first thought was Parlour Palm, but I don't know if I'm on the money with that one?

Scott: No, I think that's exactly it, I think it's Parlour Palm, or Chamaedorea elegans, and it's a beautiful little houseplant and she's doing a great job growing it. It looks pretty healthy.

Jane: So she's worrying unnecessarily about the size of the stem? I guess the reason, possibly, is that we see these Parlour Palms being sold, usually as young plants, a cluster of them in a pot, don't we?

Scott: That's right. They're naturally a single stem palm but growers usually put several plants or seedlings in a pot, just to have a more lush, more attractive product, but this is just one plant. She's growing the plant as it normally would grow in nature. It looks like it's doing quite well and the stem is naturally skinny.

Jane: She says in her accompanying message that she had three plants in the pot originally but two had died off. I guess that sometimes happen when you get these young seedlings that just fail to fully establish. The remaining one seems to be doing okay as you say. It's leaning to one side. Is there anything that Milda can do about that issue?

Scott: Yes. I think probably originally she had three seedlings and this one is the survivor of the competition. It is leaning a little bit and that could be a concern. Certainly, if she wanted to add a little bamboo stake to the pot or something like that to prop it up or hold it up, that would work. The other thing she could do if she would really, really want to, would be to try to air layer this palm. Chamaedoreas will produce roots from the stem and if she were to wrap some moist stagnant moss around the stem, just below, where all the leaves are after a while it should root into it and then she could snip it off and she would have a shorter palm. The base of the palm, her original base of the stem, that won't re-sprout. That will be the end of that. She could shorten the palm by air layering it, if she wanted to, although I think the palm looks fine as it is.

Jane: It's pretty good. The questions that I get to On The Ledge, they veer between people who have got plants that are actually fine but are worrying about them and people who aren't too worried, but their plant is basically dead! That's the two camps that the questions often fall into. I guess the other thing that's a good health sign for this plant, is that it does seem to have some kind of inflorescence on it, which Milda sent a picture through. She wasn't quite sure what it was. I'm guessing that's the Parlour Palm inflorescence? That bobbly, thin green hand, almost, that's coming up?

Scott: Yes, it's sparsely-branched flower stalk. The flowers on this palm are nothing very showy, obviously, and they're small, little, greenish flowers. This actually looks like a female plant. The male and female are separate plants in Chamaedorea, so she has a female, but it won't produce any fruits because presumably there's no other male palm in the house that could pollenate it. This is, again, an indication that the plant is doing quite well. It's happy, it's getting enough light, it's flowering.

Jane: Just remind us, Scott, what conditions Parlour Palms like to live in?

Scott: They don't want direct, harsh sunlight. These are palms that naturally grow in shade of the under-storey in tropical forests. They do well in shady, in east-facing windows, or in a partial shade situations. They're not hardy, obviously, so they can't be grown outside in your climate. She's obviously doing a good job with it. Sometimes the biggest problem is over-watering these palms and these palms grow in areas where the soil can get a little bit dry in between rainfall. So that would be my recommendation for growing it as a house plant. Let the soil begin to dry out before watering it again. Don't keep it constantly wet.

Jane: Great. As you say, it looks like Milda is doing a great job. Would another option be to stick a stake in there and maybe it would look a bit ugly, but is that another way of gradually trying to right it, by staking it?

Scott: Sure. I don't think there'd be a case where you could stake it and leave it for few months and then remove the stake and it would be permanently upright. I think if you put a stake in there, it's going to be permanent addition to the plant. A stake judiciously placed in the pot might not be too obtrusive. It might look okay.

Jane: That's great. I think Milda needs to give herself a pat on the back and just relax and not worry too much about her Parlour Palm because it's looking pretty good to me. That just about wraps up that question, is there anything else you want to tell us about Parlour Palms before you go?

Scott: Like I say, I think she's doing a great job and the plant is happy, so good on her.

Jane: Excellent, thank you so much.

Scott: You're most welcome. Bye Jane.

Jane: Thanks Scott for cracking that one. If you've got a question for On The Ledge, drop me a line because if I don't know the answer, I'll find someone who does. Now it's time to get back to my chat with Steve Rosenbaum to find out a little bit more about the intricacies of caring for Begonias.

Jane: A couple of listeners have begged me to ask you about powdery mildew because they are despairing of the fact that it's destroying their plants. I guess it's a mixture of cultural advice to stop it happening in the first place and what do you do when your plants come down with powdery mildew.

Steve: Okay, I definitely have opinions on that, some of which go against conventional wisdom but based on my experience. First of all, if you're having a lot of powdery mildew problems, I would try to find varieties that are resistant. Some Begonias are prone to get powdery mildew. If we had a variety that was giving us a lot of trouble we would just discontinue growing it because there are plenty of others. So that, for starters: avoid the susceptible plants.

What everyone says is make sure you have good air flow. I have a little story about that, because we don't usually have a powdery mildew problem. I very seldom have one. Maybe it was a coincidence, but we have a piece of equipment, a type of fan called the fan jet and you attach a convection to it which is just a big, plastic, flexible polyethylene tube that has holes in it. What it amounts to is like ductwork in a house, but it's just clear plastic with holes and it distributes the heat. So you're supposed to let that run for air circulation, but it also makes your electric bills go up because you're constantly running these big fans.

Anyway, the one year we had powdery mildew everywhere, maybe it was coincidence but I really don't think it was, was when I decided to make it where I had those fans running all the time like you're supposed to have good air circulation. Some people tell me they think what happened was that we distributed the spores more evenly by doing that, but you're supposed to do good air circulation. There are plants grown in terrariums that never have powdery mildew on them. Also there's the disease triangle, I don't know if you've discussed that in any of your podcasts, but for plant diseases you have to have three things. It's a very obvious thing, the three things you have to have the host, the plant, to begin with. You have to have the disease organism, of course. The third thing is that you have to have the right environmental conditions. If you take away any of those, so if you have the disease, the spores, the disease organism there, you have the host, the environmental conditions aren't right, then you don't have the disease problem.

So that's another thing, is maybe people who don't have problem in a terrarium, maybe they don't have the disease organism there and that's why they don't have the problem. There are a lot of variables there. As far as what to spray, I avoid chemical recommendations for people. There is a product that's available commercially that's like a sodium bicarbonate,or something like that. I tried it one time, it seemed to work the first time I tried it, I saw some results and then never had any results again after that. So that's just my personal experience with it. There's probably other people have had good experiences with them. It also caused spotting on the leaves, so I didn't like that part either.

Jane: So if your plants are coming down with powdery mildew, I guess the advice will be to take off some of the worst affected leaves, but if that's all the leaves, then that's possibly not the solution?

Steve: It might be, as I said, remove all the leaves and throw it away. As I was saying, pick another plant to grow that's not susceptible.

Jane: I guess that is the thing and sometimes you have to accept that it's not going to happen for you with a particular plant and admitting defeat is sometimes the best way forward. Powdery mildew we've dealt with. Somebody is asking about cleaning begonia leaves. Some of them are very hairy and have interesting textures and silvery patches and things. Are there are any good ways to clean them or is it just the occasional shower?

Steve: I would say the occasional shower is what I would recommend on that because, as you pointed out, if it's got a slick hard surface, like Beefsteak Begonias, you could wipe that off, but there's no need to do that. Just rinse off the foliage with gentle spray of water and that's all you need to do.

Jane: I think we're getting to the end of my main list of questions. We've covered a lot of ground there, Steve. Is there anything else you wanted to tell me about Begonias that we haven't yet discussed? One thing we haven't talked about, I should talk about this, can you tell me a bit about Begonias that do well in a smallish terrarium set up.

Steve: Something I'm not good at is thinking about varieties off the top of my head.

Jane: Me neither.

Steve: If we're walking through the greenhouse in which I would like to invite you if you're ever coming to Texas. I'd like to give you a tour.

Jane: I had a listener from Texas say to me: "I really hope you're going to come to Texas soon" and was telling me all these places to visit. So maybe a visit to Texas should be on my horizon. When you're looking for plants for terrariums, are you looking for particularly compact varieties and ones that like high humidity in order to keep them happy in that terrarium set-up? That's what you're looking for, isn't it? You don't want things that are going to get huge, that you're going to have to keep hacking back?

Steve: Correct. There's a variety called Mini Merry. That's one that I really like. That's dwarf. We don't grow many dwarf varieties because we're trying to fill out a four or six inch pot. So a lot of people, if they see a two inch pot and they may not see the value in that and it may be just as old, although it took less space, it still, age-wise, might be the same as a much larger plant. So for monetary reasons we don't grow a lot of smaller varieties.

Jane: That makes perfect sense.

Steve: Some of them you can grow in a terrarium and if they outgrow it, either get a bigger terrarium, or transplant. You can do a little research online and find the final sizes of the plant.

Jane: One thing a listener wanted to ask was tips on pruning Begonias. I'm not sure. I've had many Begonias in my life that haven't needed much pruning. They seem to self-prune by losing leaves. Presumably, when you're dealing with plants that have got too big, it's just a question of making clean cuts and making sure that you're not taking off too much in any one go, if you're pruning plants back?

Steve: With so many growth habits, it's hard to make general statements. If it's a cane or shrub type Begonia, you would want to trim it a little shorter. You want to cut it back to just above a node so you don't have an ugly stub there. I've seen people trim their plants back to the height they want and then they're saying it's already too big because it produced a new growth, you want to cut it back a little farther, so that when it does produce a new growth it goes and gets to about the size you want. Be sure to stick the cuttings you take off and share them with your friends.

Jane: That's very true. That's the best way forward.

Steve: If something is too tall and lanky, sometimes it's better to start some new ones and then you'll have a shorter compact plant.

Jane: That's good advice. Having some back up plants has certainly worked well for me for plants that I've struggled with but are finally established. I've got some new plants that are coming on that I can fall back on when things go wrong, as they sometimes do. Thanks, Steve, for talking to me about Begonias today. This might be the cue for me to go back into the crazy world of Rexes and give a couple a try in the Spring.

Steve: Okay. I hope so.

Jane: Thanks very much, Steve.

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Jane: Thanks so much to Steve for talking to me. Do check out the show notes for images and information about the plants we've talked about today. Thanks for all of your support this year. Every single one of you has been absolutely crucial in helping me to keep On The Ledge going and it's a delight to continue bringing you plant chat. I hope you all have a fabulous festive break and if I may misquote the wonderful RuPaul, "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love your plants? Can I get an Amen up in here?"

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Jane: The music you heard in this week's episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day Gokana by Samuel Corwin and Enthusiast by Tours. All the music is licensed under Creative Commons. See my show notes at JanePerrone.com for details.

Subscribe to On The Ledge via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Player FM, Stitcher, Overcast, RadioPublic and YouTube.

Steve Rosenbaum from Steve’s Leaves nursery in Texas is back to offer up more Begonia growing advice and palm expert Scott Zona joins me to talk about a problem with a skinny palm. If you haven’t yet listened to Begonias part one, please do so before listening to this episode!

This week’s guest

Steve Rosenbaum has been into houseplants since he started growing them as a teenager in the 1970s. He started his nursery Steve’s Leaves as a backyard operation at just 18 and has been going ever since, selling a wide range of Begonias along with other tropical houseplants. You can follow Steve’s Leaves on Instagram here.

Begonia notes

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Steve Rosenbaum.

• Begonia pavonina, the peacock begonia, is a rhizomatous begonia and one of Steve’s Leaves’ bestsellers. It needs very high humidity and is one of the harder Begonias to keep happy. Its iridescent blue sheen only shows up under a camera flash, so don’t be mislead into thinking it looks this way in normal light!

• I love growing B. luxurians, the palm leaf begonia, which is a shrub type.

• There are other begonias that resemble other genera, including B. foliosa, the fern leaf Begonia, and Begonia elaegnifolia ‘Schulzei’ which looks rather hoya-like!

• Begonia ‘Fireworks’ is rex type and one of Steve’s favourites. It was bred my Michael Kartuz, a hybridiser in Southern California.

• Begonia ‘White Rhino’ aka B. venosa is a challenging Begonia to grow and to propagate.

• You can grow Begonia from seed - the seed is like dust, so take care to sow thinly. Surface sow them on fine vermiculite, or fine seed compost: keep the surface moist. And be very cautious about seed bought from China that is cheap but reportedly rare - it’s not usually the real deal!

• When it comes to other forms of propagation, you can split or cut up the rhizomes of rhizomatous Begonias such as the beefsteak Begonia. Leaf wedge cuttings - each one containing at least one major vein along its cut side - work well for rexes and other Begonia types. Check out this detailed guide to begonia propagation on the American Begonia Society site for more info, including the cone method Steve mentions.

• Potting soil for Begonias is a controversial subject! A general houseplant potting mix with some added drainage material such as perlite should work for most Begonias.

• Powdery mildew is a problem for Begonias - sometimes the best solution is to find resistant varieties. Check out this American Begonia Society article on powdery mildew for more info.

• Curious about the disease triangle Steve mentioned? Here’s an explanation…

• Clean Begonia leaves by giving them a shower of (preferably soft) water. Wiping the leaves can damage softer leaves.

• Steve recommends the mini rex Begonia ‘Mini Merry’ if you are looking for a plant for terrariums.

• When pruning, cut just above a node and cut slightly shorter than you want the plant to end up, as pruning always promotes new growth. Don’t forget to use the cuttings to make new plants!

The peascock begonia shows an iridescent sheen when captured in a camera flash, but the picture on the right shows how it looks under normal light conditions. Photographs: Steve’s Leaves.

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Milda got in touch about a palm of hers that’s looking rather skinny (pictured)! Palm expert Scott Zona joined me to help identify the skinny palm and figure out where to go from here. He identified it as a parlour palm, Chamaedorea elegans, and explained that she shouldn’t worry about her plant, as this is how it grows in nature. Growers often sell parlour palms in a cluster, but grown singly the stem is pretty skinny.

Milda can deal with the leaning of the plant by adding a bamboo stake. Another option is to air layer the palm, by wrapping moist moss around the stem just below the leaves and waiting for it to root. She could then snip off the top below the new root growth and replant.

You can hear loads more from Scott about palms in On The Ledge episode 63.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!

Want to find out how to become a Patreon subscriber? If you have the third of a price of a cup of takeaway coffee to spare once a month, you can support On The Ledge financially.

Just $1 a month helps to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last two years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, not to mention my time! For $5 or more a month, you get access to two extra episodes a month, known as An Extra Leaf.

My $10 tier gives you membership of the On The Ledge listener advisory board, a group helping to decide the future direction of the show: you’ll also receive a personal greeting from me in the mail including a limited edition postcard. You can see all the tiers and sign up for Patreon here.

If you like the idea of supporting On The Ledge on a regular basis but don't know what Patreon's all about, check out the FAQ here: if you still have questions, leave a comment or email me - ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. If you're already supporting others via Patreon, just click here to set up your rewards!

For those who prefer to make a one-off donation, you can still buy me a coffee! A donation of just £3 helps keep On The Ledge going: helping to pay for me to travel to interviews, and for expenses like website hosting and audio equipment. Don't forget to join the Facebook page for news of what's coming up on the show and bonus blogposts!

If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. It's lovely to read your kind comments, and it really helps new listeners to find the show.

CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day Gokana by Samuel Corwin and Enthusiast by Tours.

Logo design by Jacqueline Colley.