Tuberous Begonia propagation
Johannes-Ulrich Urban (Sun, 05 May 2013 14:37:00 PDT)

Dear Brian,

In old gardening books I have often found the advice to divide Begonia
tubers. Personally I would not do it. The risk of losing all the
segments seems too big. If your Begonias have shoots of only a few cm
tall right now I would wait a little longer until they have 2 or 3
leaves and are about 10cm tall. Then cut them off at their base,
sometimes they have rootlets. In general these cuttings root well and
produce a reasonable sized tuber. I have done this many times with
little losses. I never lost a mother tuber this way.
Even leaf cuttings are possible, I found an interesting article on this
subject and tried last summer. The leaves rooted indeed but did not
produce tubers big enough to survive the winter. I might have started
too late in the season, though.
What type of tuberous Begonia do you grow? Species or Hybrids?

Greetings from spring....

Uli