Save a buck, or three: Purchase your tickets for the annual Snohomish Garden Club Tour by Sunday and pay only $12. After that, the price goes up to $15. The tour is noon to 5 p.m. July 27. You can purchase tickets at Sunnyside Nursery, Molbaks, Emerys, Machias Nursery, Kuslers Pharmacy, Joyworks, Sun Song and McDaniels Do-It Center. Look for Home &Garden’s preview of the tour in the July 24 issue. For more tour details, go to www.snohomishgardenclub.com or call 360-568-2526.
Better begonias: Gail Lovell of Edmonds, whose garden we featured in the last Thursday’s Home &Garden, offers this advice on growing begonias:
Tuberous begonias aren’t much like the better-known wax begonias. Hairy, homely tubers under the soil push out shoots that develop into plump leaves and cotton-candy-bright blooms.
Lovell keeps some of hers in simple clay pots, and they’re still so sexy they practically perform a burlesque striptease on her shady Edmonds deck.
Lovell mail orders hers in winter from Antonelli Bros. Begonia, a grower in Watsonville, Calif.
Plant tubers roots down in a container filled with good quality potting soil. Cover the tuber with about a quarter-inch of soil.
Tuberous begonias like part shade and moist soil, but not too moist. Water thoroughly, then wait until the top of the soil is dry before watering again, she said.
Lovell gives her begonias a shot of all-purpose liquid fertilizer every few weeks.
The tubers need to come out of the ground before the first hard frost. She hoses them off, lets them dry and then sets them out of direct sunlight in the garage for the winter.
About mid-March she plants the tubers in 4 inches of soil in the deep plastic produce containers and sets them in her west-facing living room window out of direct sunlight. The tubers need regular water. By Mother’s Day, she’s ready to plant them outside.
To purchase begonia from Antonelli’s, go to www.antonellibegonias.com or call 888-4Begonias.
Herald staff
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