Love interesting foliage? Then you'll love Rex Begonias. While these plants are typically easy to care for, you can have trouble with them if you are overly-loving when it comes to watering. Begonia plants need to dry between waterings (just like many succulents) and can rot quickly if you leave them too wet too frequently.

Make sure the soil in your begonia plant pot is dry to the touch before watering again, and always keep water off the foliage, as it can cause spots on the leaves as well as fungal issues. Make sure your plant your begonia in a container with drainage holes, and use a water catch to trap the excess. Begonias like medium light conditions.

Some of the dual-band or multiband LED fixtures are zoned so you can turn on only the color or mix of colors you want, depending on your plant’s stage of growth. This is handy when you have a small growing space and cannot move plants to different lamps between the vegetative and flowering stages.

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Chlorosis can appear as an overall yellow cast to the leaf, or interveinal chlorosis (yellow between green veins) as shown in the photo – due to a lack of chlorophyll. Chlorosis signals potential nutrient deficiencies (iron, manganese, zinc); it can also signal poor drainage, soil compaction, or high soil or water pH.

To prevent cholorsis, feed your seedlings once per week at low doses, or every two weeks if you have bumped up to a stronger feed.

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When you decide to grow tomatoes indoors, space is a big consideration. Vining, or indeterminate tomatoes, can grow 25-feet tall! I'm guess you don't have that kind of space indoors. Be sure to look for "bush" tomatoes, also called determinate tomatoes.

Determinate tomato varieties are shorter and bushier, growing to 3 to 5 feet and putting on most of their fruit at the same time. Determinate types, like 'Homeslice', are better suited to normal indoor growing spaces. Many new dwarf and mini-tomato plants are quite compact, making them perfect for container growing.

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Growing in a hydroponic system requires different media. Expanded clay pellets, known as hydroton, are often used as a supportive substrate in hydroponic and aeroponic growing systems.

Hydroton is usually held in baskets that are suspended in water, or in pots where water is recirculated. They hydroton creates a support structure for the plant roots as they are bathed in water from the hydronponic system.

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If you're a budding plant collector, you might soon find that your'e running out of prime window real estate for your plants. As you move away from the window, your plant collection ever-expanding, light levels will decrease. That means you may run out of room to keep the types of plants you want to keep, or be able to encourage flowers on your blooming plants in lower-light areas.

Most succulents won't thrive long-term in a standard windowsill, as they typically need brighter light. Creating an area where you can add grow lamps - say a shelf in your kitchen or guest room- can help you deliver enough light to your favorite plant companions. I created this shelving area in my garage to house an overflow of my houseplants and bloomers. I use an 8-lamp HO T5 fixture that hangs above the area, lighting assorted orchids, African violets, succulents, herbs, and more. I can rotate these plants back into my living space when they are blooming, or harvest herbs indoors all winter.

If you start seriously collecting certain types of indoor plants or you want to enter specimens in flower shows and plant competitions, an indoor-light setup will be necessary to stimulate production and force flowering on a schedule.

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The world of LED technology for growing plants has exploded over the past few years. Their growing popularity is based on improving cost and energy efficiency. Most of the self- contained growing units on the market, such as those intended for growing greens or herbs on your kitchen counter or even integrated into your kitchen fixtures, use LEDs.

Small LED lamps and fixtures such as this one are typically affordable. You can use them to grow small succulents, microgreens, small orchids, or low-growing herbs.

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On the seed packet you will find information on when you can expect flowers or fruit from a mature plant, also known as days-to-harvest. Days-to-harvest varies, depending on whether you direct seed or transplant your edible crops.

If you direct seed your crop into the garden or the container in which it will grow indoors, the days-to-harvest number is calculated from the date of germination. For crops that are first grown as a transplant that will be repotted, the days-to-harvest is calculated from the date of transplanting.

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