February 2009 Archives

After planting seeds from about 40 immature brugmansia seed pods I'm excited to report that about 1/3 already have seeds sprouting!  I'm sure more crosses will sprout in the next week or two.  This is way cool because I had some important crosses I was afraid I might have lost in the freeze. 

There are at least 30 more seeds pods that were damaged in the freeze that I plan to plant next weekend. My guess is that I have about the same number that did not get damaged that are still growing on their mother plants.

Next month the cycle starts all over when I expect to have a bunch of blooms open and ready to be pollinated.  

That is the question I keep asking myself as I gather up the numerous seed pods that were  either damaged by the recent freeze or knocked off in the process of moving and or covering plants for protection.  I trashed the ones that I knew were immature, but the ones that were weeks away from starting to ripen were saved.  What is strange is that none of the seeds pods themselves were damaged by the freeze, but the stems and branches  holding them were.  Maybe the pods have some type of natural antifreeze in them?

 

I have decided to plant all of the ones that have solid seeds.  I figure I have nothing to lose but some time and potting mix.  I'm not sure if it matters, but I plan to leave the pods sit until they turn brown and soft.  I figure if they are still green the seeds may be in survival mode and are sucking the last bit of food out of the pod.

I have planted white immature seeds before with fairly good germination.  I'm hoping I'll have some luck this time too because I had some really great crosses growing before the freezes rolled in.

After several year's of relatively mild winters, the dark side of mother surfaced again this month.  In January we had a hard freeze that brought temperatures down to the mid 20's for a couple of days.  Now, just a few weeks later we are back in Mother Nature's deep freeze.  All I can say is that I hate cold weather!!!!!!!!   I know this is going to be a major setback to my hybridizing program.  My motto in times of crisis has always been, "deal with it and move on", and that's what I will do. 

I knew going into winter I would be gambling with the weather.  I was betting on another mild winter, and I lost my bet.  Hey, were in a period of global warming, winters are supposed to be warmer than usual, right?  I had planned to build a shade structure last fall to protect my plants, but time was not on my side.  It did not help that I grew many more seedlings that I had planned. I know being a pack rat contributed to that.  When more seeds than expected germinated from a cross, I planted them all rather just plant 20-30 seedlings as a trial.  That will change this year for sure.

Now the waiting game begins to see how many seedlings recover.  To keep myself from getting too bummed about this, I remind myself that even if I lost 2,000 seedlings to the back to back freezes, I have over 6,000 more that survived and may be blooming this year!