Nothing as meticulous as
@cctaylor’s mum’s method, I’m afraid. When the flowers had died off last autumn I cut all the stems to about an inch long and removed the corms from the compost. Those in a couple of troughs had obviously been infested by weevils so I chucked them (and the compost) away. I let the others dry outside for a couple of days then put them in paper carrier bags in the boiler room to try out thoroughly for a few weeks. Then I removed what was left of the stalks, brushed off as much soil as possible, put them back in the bags, stuffed them into the corner of a cupboard and forgot about them.
Around the beginning of March I was stomping around in a fury looking for something, found some carrier bags in a cupboard and wondered if it might be in there. I opened one and to my surprise found some begonia corms that were showing signs of sprouting. Over the next few weeks more and more started - even those that had only been tiny plug plants the year before. At the start of May I put them all onto trays in a greenhouse (hollows upwards) and kept them moist. That’s all, really. A few of the remaining ones are now showing tiny shoots - I reckon that makes 42 successes out of 45.
