Archive for February, 2008

Light and Water

Plenty of light is essential but avoid direct sunshine which burns leaves and wilts flowers. On the shaded top deck in the greenhouse, where I grow most of my gloxinias, they receive on a summer day about 2000 foot-candles of light at 12:30 P.M. Plants raised in poor light tend to grow too tall and are slow to bud. Gloxinias grown under constant water level, that is, where the soil is always kept moist, bud much faster than those watered only when the soil obviously needs it.

Health Program and Storing

Thrips, red spider, cyclamen mite, and crown rot, are the worst annoyances. Good culture is the best preventative, but any of the “medicines” prescribed for other exotic house plants will work on gloxinias. If you are loath to use poisonous sprays and powders, try Carco-X on gloxinias and other tuberous-rooted plants. This tar derivative practically exterminates all the usual pests and is a marvelous fungicide as well.

69. Rechsteineria purpurea, sometimes called the double-decker plant,

is sure to strike the fancy of customers who want “something different.”

(Photograph by Author)

After plants finish flowering, gradually withhold water to dry off the tubers. I like to lay the pots on their sides while tubers are being dried off and, when they are dry, store them so in a 50-degree room. Or tubers can be removed from pots and stored in plastic sacks of vermiculite.