I’ve said it before – I love Non Stop Begonia. For shade gardeners looking for something more than pretty foliage, the flowers on Non Stop begonias are high impact. It’s kind of like they’re the shade equivalent of Geraniums.
There’s a huge range of colors to choose from either with green leaves in the Non Stop series, or in the dark-leaved Non Stop Mocca series.
Last year was my first year growing them.
I tried the Mocca Bright Orange, with chocolate-colored leaves and those amazing bright orange flowers.
And I tried Non Stop Joy, a beautiful clear yellow that’s perfect for hanging baskets. I have seen Non Stop Joy advertised as having 100% double flowers, but even though it tends to a higher number of double flowers, it isn’t 100%. Non Stop begonias never are, because they have both male and female flowers, and it is impossible (or at least very difficult) to completely breed out the male or single flowers.
It was instant love, so I added Mocca Cherry to the collection too. There was never a time over the summer that these plants didn’t have flowers.
Non Stop Begonia Care & Habit
- Nonstop and Nonstop MOCCA are both available in a range of colors.
- Nonstop Begonias will grow in sun to partial shade – a huge plus in my mostly shady yard.
- They grow 8-9″ tall with a well branched mounded habit.
- Suitable for Pots, Hanging Baskets, Mixed Containers and Landscape.
- Plants are usually sold in pots 4 1/2″ and up. They are showy enough that for the home gardener, the higher price is still a good value.
- Non Stops are a tuberous begonia
- They are day length sensitive, so starting them from seed might be tempting but providing 12 hour days for them is rarely practical outside of the greenhouse. Without the correct amount of light, they stop growing and eventually disappear, so unless you know how to save the tubers they won’t over winter.
This season I planted Mocca White – you can see how I used them here – Plant Your Own Dramatic Patio Planter!
For more information on Non Stop and Non Stop Mocca Begonias, visit the breeder website –Benary.
True story – way back when I started working in the wholesale ornamental plant industry, I used to enter customer orders. Some customers would send their orders with tray counts and I would have to convert them to units for our order entry system. So along comes this one order and the customer requested say 9 trays each of red and yellow Non Stop Begonia. So I multiplied 72 ( the number of plants in each tray) by 9, lost my mind for a minute, and multiplied by 9 again. It was a huge and extremely expensive error.
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