Garden Tips - Frequent Plant Questions

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Annuals

Here are some facts about Annuals, including common questions.

Are you supposed to pull up begonias in the winter?

Answer
Without knowing what plants you have, all we can offer is general advice; yes keep them watered, but just. Being soggy this time of year in the winter can be a death sentence for most plants. Any of the plants that have maintained green foliage will need some light; a window or somewhere close to one will do.

You may or may not get these plants back the following year; tropicals like New Guinea impatiens are not going to survive that treatment and annuals like regular impatiens don't come back period, so check the tags and let us know.

The begonias I suspect you have are B. grandis (syn. B. evansii or B. grandis var.evansii), or hardy begonias, and while you're at the northern side of their range, you still should get them back most every year.

That said, I was sitting at a lunch with a nursery owner from your neck of the woods at a trade show, and I empathised about the horrble ice storm and cold temperatures they were having, and was suprised when he beamed back, "Hell this is great! Means they all gotta replace their annuals now!"

Which is my gentle way of telling you, in some harder years you're going to have to do some begonia replacement and every so often Mother Nature will require you to re-plant the whole lot. But for the moment, don't do a thing...