Pick up sticks...

Seeing how I'm sort of playing catch-up here I thought I would share a few photos from the post-freeze clean-up.  To recap, the winter of 2009 was said to be the worst ever here in Central Florida.  I had planned to build a large shade house last fall to protect my brugs, but was not able to do so.  I relied on frost cloth, plastic sheeting, and an endless supply of water to protect my brugs.  The damage was great and I estimate that I lost about 30% of my plants.

Here's a photo from early spring after I had cut back many of my larger brugmansia seedlings to the ground.


I was excited to see many of the plants sprouting new growth shortly after I did my pruning.  Before the month-long clean-up process was over i ended up with several large piles of dead brug cuttings like the one below. 


I also learned to be very careful when handling large quantities of brugmansia branches.  When I was cleaning up this mess the temps were near 80 so I opted to work shirtless and in shorts....BIG MISTAKE! At the time many of the branches were still oozing out sap and of course I got completely coated with the stuff.  By the end of the day I was not feeling well and it took me almost a week to feel normal again.  I handle brugs all the time and have never had this happen before, even when I spend a day taking fresh cutting to propagate.  I'm sure it was just the result of me be glazed over by all the sap.

Rather than burn the piles as I have done in the past, I'm letting them decompose to avoid potential dangers from clouds of burning brugmansia smoke.

I will have my shadehouse and greenhouse built by this fall so i hope to never see piles of dead brugs like this again!