November 2007 Archives

That's my current dilemma as many of my brugmansia plants start their fall blooming cycle.  I've been anxiously awaiting the cooler weather to make it easier for my crosses to take.  This weekend I focused on my variegated varieties because the blooms were prime.  I'm hoping to find some type of variegation in a plant with a pink, yellow/orange or double bloom.  I know it is a long shot, but you never know. Here are a few of the many crosses I made:

Sun Sport x Axel Rose
Sun Sport x Maya
Sun Sport x Taylor Dawn
Sun Sport x Creamsickle
Sun Sport x Butterfly
Sun Sport x Mt. Treasure
Sun Sport x Inca Sun
Axel Rose x Mt. Magic
Axel Rose x Mt. Treasure
Axel Rose x Creamsickle
Axel Rose x Butterfly
Axel Rose x Taylor Dawn
Axel Rose x Goldfinch
Axel Rose x Sun Sport
Mt. Treasure x Maya
Mt. Treasure x Sun Sport
Mt. Treasure x Axel Rose

Here's a picture of my Variegated Maya with several recently pollinated blooms:


I also made a bunch crosses on Coldfire and Wild Thing.


Monday & Tuesday I'll be focusing on Inca Sun in hopes to create more varieties with its early blooming characteristics.


Next weekend the focus will be on doubles as I expect  many of my new doubles to be in bloom including:


Meadow Princess
Sam
Pink Smitty
Edna
Magnifique
Masquerade
America
Naughty Nick
Dream Angel

I guess I'm just a pollinating fool....

I returned from a two day road trip to find a dead catfish in my driveway.  It looked to me to be about a 3-4 pounder and had most likely only been there for a half day.  How on earth does a catfish end up in your driveway????  Were aliens responsible?  Does this have some deep meaning behind it?  

I'm used to finding dead animals in my yard, but never fish.  Both my dog and cat enjoy hunting.  For my dog she's usually responsible for a few possum, rabbit and field rat deaths each year.  My cat focuses on birds, reptiles, and rodents.

There are plenty of fish close by too.  Lake Minneola is a couple hundred feet to the west and on the east side of my house there is a small pond about 500 hundred feet away.  That would most likely be the source because it is slowly drying up as the result of our drought and is a more likely place to find catfish than Lake Minneola.

After inspecting the catfish I could find no signs of an animal attack.  I doubt either one of my pets were responsible so I was thinking maybe one of the local hawks or Ospreys may have inadvertently dropped it while buzzing overhead.  But after closer inspection I could not find any wounds that may have resulted from being clutched by a bird.

So that leaves one possibility, it is a walking catfish.  I've seen pictures of them, but have never seen one in real life.  I know they have established themselves throughout Florida and I've seen video footage of them on our local TV stations.  I scoured the web for pictures and after reviewing dozens of photos, my mystery fish does resemble a walking catfish.  Unfortunately I've already buried the fish so I can't do a close comparison.

This will certainly make it easier for me to fish for fresh fish.  I can work in my yard and still fish.  How cool is that  when fish walk right up to your back door!

This weekend I continued to clean-up my brugmansia seedling collection.  I decided to let the plants in one gallon pots stay in their original pots rather then up size them to larger ones. Most are rooted in the ground so they have the stability they need to stay upright.  Another group of younger gallon size plants had been attacked by caterpillars so I removed the damaged leaves and spaced the plants out.

For my major weekend project I opted to move my larger 3 inch potted seedlings up to 4 1/2 deep pots for the winter. I also gave them a dose of timed release fertilizer, something I may regret if we have a cold winter.  At last count I believe I moved up just over 500 seedlings.  Within the next week I'll zap them with some growth regulator to help keep them compact as they mature.

I spent about half the weekend bending over and now my back is telling me how displeased it is with me.  Oh to be young again....

Saturday I trekked over to Mt. Dora for their annual plant festival.  It is rare that a plant festival matches up with one of my few free weekends so I was psyched.  You never know what to expect at a plant festival.  Sometimes all the vendors are selling the same plants that you would typically find at your local Home Depot, while others have growers with hard to find plants.  Mt. Dora had both and I came home with a few treasures. A couple of the plants I found  were plants that used to grow in our yard when I was a kid.  For whatever reason they died years ago and they have always been on my wish list to replace.  The first one I found was a ribbon bush. 
I think it also called a tapeworm plant.  It has thin flat stems and grows about 3 feet tall.  It has a real unusual look to it. 

The other find was more common yet seldom seen at local garden centers.  It is called the chinese hat plant because the flowers resemble a cone shaped chinese hat.  The pot I bought had both the orange and red versions in it.   I also grabbed a mexican daisy shrub, a couple of unusual staghorn fern pups, some epiphyllum species (orchid cactus) and another plant that I have already forgot the name of. 

Next year I plan to be there as a seller hoping to get rid of my surplus brugmansia plants.  Only a couple of vendors had brugs for sale and they were homely looking plants.

After a crazy month with my job I finally have time to do some gardening...and some garden blogging.  I have some major catching up to do.  The first project on my list is to deal with my over-sized brugmansia.  I have at least 250 plants in 3-5 gallon pots that are at least five feet tall.  With all the wind we have been having it looks like mother nature has been bowling in my yard using the brugs as bowling pins.  More brugs are laying down than standing up.  So my task is to create a series of rows with rope and tie the brugs to the rope to keep them up.    Of course the location I selected to construct the rope rows is about 100 yards away.  That's allot of moving to do....