Quite some time back, I thought I try something new and plant a begonia tuber.

I had never done this before, as my relatively thrifty soul balked at the price of a tuber.

Of course, come gardening time, it balked even more at the price if the actual plant!

In the interests of my blog readers I felt I should give this a try. That way we could all learn together. This also gives you the advantage of not being out $4 should this fail! (I love it when I can come up with a good excuse!)

The tuber needs to be planted halfway into the soil mix with the concave side upwards and

the pot should only be slightly larger than the tuber .

Begonias have very small root systems. The roots must be all the way to the edge of the container before you transplant it into a larger pot.

Cover with soil.

Water.

And here, my dear friends, is where I ran into trouble.

I reread the planting directions and saw, in bold, this warning:

-Do not let any water sit in the hollow tuber or it may rot.

What!

Well, I'll fix that!

Ummm, in trying to drain the excess water from the pot, an unfortunate thing occurred.

The tuber fell out!

No problem.

I can put it back.

Hang on. . .

There!

I mixed a little dry soil with the incredibly wet soil.

That should do it!

Now for a quick double check on the proper way to start these guys.

I hop over to Doug green's site. http://www.douggreensgarden.com/

What!

Only water with warm water or the tuber may rot!

Oh for crying out loud!

It also wants bottom heat, so I put it on top of one of my fluorescent lights. (the old ones throw off a lot of heat.)

I have never had to worry about too much water before.

My poor plants generally worry about not having enough water.

So here we are. . .

Six weeks later. . .

Whew!

I can still call myself a gardener.