There are two types of begonias - the tuberous and the fibrous ones. I'm not fond of the fibrous ones and we don't have any so I won't discuss them - and I wasn't overly fond of the tuberous ones until I tried to grow some.
This year I have tried from seed and we have some plants growing - from two packets of seeds we have maybe four klnats - not a good return on the money for the moment. I am gradually coming around to agree with something that Bob Flowerdew said - that for ,many plants seeds are not economical - either they don't work well becuase they need expert raising in which case the plants are no chealer - or they work really well and you end up with far too many plants - who really needs 50 lupins (like we have growinf from seeds no) or a hundred sedums (ditto). maybe it is better to leave the seed raising to experts and just to spend the same amount of money on top quality plants.
For a home gardening I think that this may be a good philiospophy - I know that when you work it out on a plant for plant basis the number of seed failures that we have mean that the plants we have raised are often as expensive as bought in plants. But then there are a few exceptions where we do want loads of plants or where the plants are very expensive.
Plus we want to be more than home gardeners.
Even here growing on slips (the plants that arrive in high number trades) is definitely advantageous for many plnats - or growing on bulbns. For example I doubt that many people will raise daffodils from seed - nobody at home I suspect except for plant breeders who develoip new stock. In the plant trade nobody does it all from breeding to multiplying stock to seed sowing to plant growing to marketting flowers... at least I don't hink so.
But I digress for a change (Ha!)
Begonias - well our tuberous begonias (grown from 'free' begonias given with other purchases - I have never knowingly bought a begonia) seem to have done really well this year - their second year in the same pots. I particularly like the white ones .
As I said we got freebie ones - nd have some more this year too - which have started growing for this year but it will too late for a display this year so hopefully next will be good.
