Question- Your plants are beautiful. Where do you get begonias like these--I have not seen them in NY.. Do you ever exchange clippings. Something that plants can be started from? I have some pothos green and white clippings if interested. Contact me at: plant_medic@optonline.net If interested.

Humidity is a two edged sword at times. It can help a plant on the brink of death but it can also cause other problems like mold and sudden explosions of mealy bugs. I like to cover most of my plants but also keep an eye open to potential problems. My previous 'Silver Jewel' grew like a weed in summer but then I watched it slowly die over last winter. This year my much smaller 'Silver Jewel' is doing pretty good after I recognized it was in decline and covered it ASAP. It now has several new leaves but I think mealies are attacking it now (hard to get to so I'm letting it alone for the time being). I lost my 'Brown Eyes' last summer. Another lesson learned is to keep the small plants away from the big ones so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. They need as much light, water, and nutrients as the big boys. At least I had learned from a few years back to keep them out of the same pot. That begonia in the bottom right corner is 'Jabberwocky'. I really like the gaudy colors of rexes though. Here are some of the same rexes in a big tank before I moved them out. Here are some plants I started by leaf cuttings. I use the high dome covers on quite a few of the younger plants.

Thanks for your reply and your vote of confidence! So you think they will be okay, but go dormant at a later date. I will taper off the water to help them get the idea. Maybe I should put the boliviensis in the three season room, which is cooler. The boliviensis is in a tippy pot that was hanging, but now is perched on a table, and it got off balance and landed on the floor. It lost a stem, but seems okay. I have to get some hooks installed, or something. I hate moving. If the white one goes dormant and doesn't come back, I have one cutting that I didn't give away that is just beginning to bloom, so maybe I will have tuberhybrida begonias still. What a funny name! Like a turbo-begonia. I do okay with plants that are okay with getting dry in between watering. I kind of have one style of plant care, and it seems to work for a lot of things. I try to look at the plant and see what I think it needs. The four kinds of begonia that I have seem to be okay with what I do. They seem to be generous plants. I also have a beefsteak begonia and some other kind of angel wing type that I'm not sure what it is, but a woman traded me a cutting of it for a cutting of the beefsteak one. I think it maybe is a fibrous rooted one. I bet there are a few kinds that I'd better not try, though. Anything that likes to be wet and humid and warm I'll kill. I am happy to have a forum for just about any plant that I want to learn about. I really appreciate the people who answer my posts with their more extensive experience. Thanks again.

Hi woollady, Those are just common shop lights - some of the cheapest I could find. I am close to swapping out all my T12 fixtures to T8 so I am paying for everything twice. The fixtures are two bulb 48" T8. I buy the 25 or 30 bulb packs to get the price as cheap as possible. Nothing special about the bulbs either. I hang one fixture per shelf but I did hang two fixtures per shelf for tall canes last year - there are only 4 shelves that I did this. You will find that you should rotate your plants every few weeks to get stronger light on the "dark" side. Any light beats no light. Here is an example of a shelf with light above it.