December 2007 Archives

It looks like D-day is just around the corner.  The dreaded day I'm referring to is our first night with frost and potentially freezing weather.  I was hoping we could slide through the winter without either, but the odds of that happening are not looking good right now.  Here's what Accuweather has to say - "Clear with the temperature approaching the record low of 28 set in 1979; watch for a hard freeze".  Oh joy, guess I know how I'll be spending the new year, covering plants with frost cloth.  Maybe the weather gods will be on our side and some cloud cover will move in that night...

That's the story with this brugmansia.  It is a cross between Miss Caylie and Genevieve and is one of several plants I have growing from this cross.  Here's what the flowers looked like when the plant first bloomed in November. It was so ugly it almost ended up in the compost pile.  Knowing that the first blooms a seedling produces may not resemble the flowers the plant produces as it matures, I decided to let the plant stay for a couple more rounds of blooms.  Over the weekend the second set of blooms started to open, and what a surprise.  The one bloom was a monster double measuring over 11 inches across and 15 inches tall.  The second bloom had just started to open when I snapped this picture and it is a triple with a separated skirt. 
As seedlings go it is a fairly large plant reaching seven feet before it  bloomed.  After this round of blooms it has earned its keep and will now be planted in the ground to be trialled for the summer.   I did sneak some pollen in the larger bloom today so we'll see if it is ready to set a seed pod. 

So much for getting a yellow double brugmansia for Christmas. The bloom is fully open now and it is white.  Darn that Grinch!

The bloom is a nice healthy sized bloom with a fragrance so I'll keep it around for a few more bloom cycles to see what it does. The day after I shot the picture below it started getting a faint pink hue to it.  Unfortunately I accidentally snapped the bloom off as I was examining the inside of the flower.  Now it is time to play the waiting game as new buds are just forming and it will be 4-6 weeks before I see open blooms again.

My brugmansia Ambrosia x Creamsicle bloom is almost open but the color has not changed much.  It is still a cream to light yellow color.
The bloom does have a nice texture to it and it looks like it will be well shaped double flower.  It also has a pleasant fragrance associated with it.  Now if I could only inject some yellow color genes into it I may have a keeper on my hands.

One of the toughest parts of growing out brugmansia seedlings is waiting for the blooms to open.  Sometimes it takes weeks for the buds to open.  Of course the more you watch them, the longer it takes them to open.  With brugs, the dominant color is white.  For me this equates to about every three out of four seedlings I grow having white blooms.  This monster bud is playing with my mind right now.  I know it is going to at least be a double bloom and it appears to have a yellowish tint to it.  There is not an abundance of double yellow  brugmansia available in the United States so having a large yellow brug would be awesome.  I don't want to get my hopes up yet because many blooms start out cream colored and then end up being solid white or pink.  It looks like it will be fully open on Christmas day, and what a great Christmas present a large double yellow bloom would be for me!

Actually it wasn't the fox and the hound, it was the fox and my dog Inga. I apologize for the dead animal picture, but this is what I encountered while I was out spraying for pests on Saturday morning. I heard the ruckus in the wee hours of the morning, but I had no idea what was shaking down outside. 

We've had red foxes around our house as far back as I can remember.  Usually I spot them late at night when I am returning home from the office.  I'll spot them as they scurry across the road dashing into the brush.  This summer I had a close encounter during daytime when a fox came within 10 feet of me while I was working on my plants.  It wasn't afraid of me at all and just sort of looked at me quizzically and meandered back into the brush.

Inga is the most laid-back dog around and it is hard to imagine that she is a killer. She is a cat friendly dog and has experienced the loss of at least two cats since I've had her.  Maybe that's why she took care of the fox?

A few years back I had a problem with disappearing cats/kittens and I always figured the culprit was either a fox or an alligator.  When you look at the teeth this fox was sporting it is easy to see how a cat/kitten would make a nice meal.

Later that afternoon I prepared a grave for the fox and buried it.  I almost had to battle a buzzard for the carcass.  Man those birds act fast!   I always plant a living thing on top of a dead animal grave so I readied the the grave for one of my brugmansia seedlings.  I have at least a dozen seedlings that will be blooming for the first time this week and one of them will earn top honors as a living tombstone for this poor old red fox.

By Christmas I'll be encountering another major flush of blooms on my brugmansia plants.  Before I go crazy cross pollinating blooms I decided to take a pod inventory to see which of my earlier crosses actually took.  I was shocked to see that I had over 150 seed pods in various stages of development.  I only counted them if they were at least an inch or two long and fattening up.  I probably have another 50 that are still small and haven't made it past the stage where they could easily be dropped by the mother plant.  Of course there is no guarantee that all of these will continue to grow into mature pods, but odds are most will.  The equates to lots of seeds.

If you are not familiar with brugmansia, they set different size pods depending on the cultivar.  Some may be as large as a cucumber, while others may be egg shaped and about the size of chicken egg.   You'll find all sorts of shapes and sizes in between.  The pods usually take a minimum of three months to mature and can take lots longer.

Now that I know which crosses took I can plan my hybridizing strategy for the next set of blooms.  If you happen to see me strolling around my yard with a headlamp and forceps on Christmas Eve, you know what I'm doing.

I recently was rewarded with a couple of new double blooms on my Brugmansia seedlings.  The yellow one is the one that I'm most excited about. It is a cross between Hawaiian Double White x Ecuador Pink and Jamie's Monkey Business.  It only had the one bloom when I snapped this picture but several new buds have recently formed and should be open before the new year.  This was just one of several plants I have from this cross but it is the only one with double yellow blooms.  

Brugmansia Delta Dawn was a vigorous grower for me and loved to show off her large over-sized yellow blooms.  During the couple of flushes she had this summer there were so many blooms that the branches were touching the ground.