Recently in Ramblings Category

With many of my potted brugmansia seedlings frozen back to ground level, I had to take a wait and see approach to see which ones would live on and sprout back.  After cutting the frozen plants back to the ground, the soil surface was now exposed to bright sunlight and an influx of weed seeds from a neighboring field.  Normally I would apply some pre-emergent weed preventative on the surface, but I was afraid that may interfere with the plants ability to sprout back from the roots.  I tried to stay on top of my weeding so any newly sprouted weeds would not have a chance to get established, but unfortunately my real job got in the way.  As a result, I ended with some very healthy patches of weeds this spring.

The weeds were definitely gaining the upper hand and were growing faster than the brugs.  It was time for action!  .   

As soon as I had an open weekend, I brought in a worker and we went to work.  After two twelve hour days, the end was finally in sight.  Pictured below is the result of our labor, one of the three, five foot tall piles of weeds we generated.

Now my older brugmansia seedlings have room to breath and grow.  A few weeks ago they received a nice dose of fertilizer and they are rebounding nicely.  Some are even forming buds, no doubt to reward me for the special care.  :)

This group of seedlings was in bloom last fall.  Now, thanks to our severe winter, they are at a fraction of their original size,  They have some growing to do before they start surprising me with blooms.  This was the last group of gallon size seedlings I have growing directly on the ground.  Starting last spring most of my seedlings are growing on ground cloth.

The work never ends...

No I didn't give up blogging, I just had to focus my energy on a couple of other web projects this spring.  While both are still a work in progress, I now have time to get back up to speed with things here.  Also motivating me to post is that the brugs that survived the freeze are rebounding nicely.  I have had a bunch of blooms appear this past month and have been able to get a couple dozen seed pods to set with hopefully more to come.  I made over 50 additional crosses since last week, but with afternoon temps hovering around 90, I'm not sure how many will take.

Anyways, I'm excited to be back!

Central Florida's chilly winter this year is going into the record books as the coldest in nearly 30 years.  The National Weather Service stated this week that this has been the coldest winter season on record since 1981.  Winter does not appear to want to give up its hold on us so we could be on the way to setting the record as the coldest winter season on record.

The only upside to all this is that our much-needed rainfall has been above average this winter. 

I say let's close the record books and bring on spring!

This has been a tough move for my blog.  I must have installed and uninstalled it on my new server at least a dozen times this week trying to get it display properly.  I think I finally have it right. I'm hoping this post will make it online so I can get back on track with my garden blog.

Don't expect to be inundated with posts the next several days.  I still have a bunch of my event websites to move and upgrade, and then of course my SommerGardens.com site needs to be built from the ground up again.  :(

I will be ready to do some serious gardening when this monster project is completed.

The smell of death is the air as plants damaged by Florida's recent devastating freeze succumb to Mother Nature's wrath. The visual impact is bad enough without the need to max out the senses with the smell of decaying foliage.  

I thought I would share some pictures of the ugliness in my yard. At least I have enough evergreen plants scattered around to balance out the signs of death.

My dog Inga blends in well with many shades of brown the freeze has generated. Here you'll see brunfelsia (foreground) and tibouchina (background) showing severe damage.

I guess I should not expect any bananas this spring.

The clerodendron (right) really took a beating. The acacia on the left will have to be cut back to the ground.

My yard grown brugmansia look like death warmed over.

The gold dust croton is one of the hardier types of crotons and it also succumbed to the cold this winter.

It would be cool if this Ixora would keep this nice bronze color year round.

This giant king sago is going to need a major pruning next month, something I am not looking forward to because of the serrated stems.

I'll use my lawn mower to trim the asparagus fern. I have large beds of sprengeri plus some smaller plantings of meyer (below).

More photos to come....

With record setting cold blanketing Central Florida this week, nothing was spared from Mother nature's wrath.

This orange tree happened to be on the outer fringes of my outdoor brugmansia growing area and got caught by my sprinklers during the sub freezing weather.  The sprinklers were on to provide a protective ice blanket for my brugmansia during the freezes. 

I'm not sure if it has gotten cold enough to damage the citrus yet, but many of my brugs took a beating.  We have a hard freeze warning in effect for the next couple of days so the worst may be yet to come.  Tonight's forecast predicts the lowest temperatures of the winter and seeing how it is has only reached 34f by noon today, it does not look good.

I'll have a better idea of the extent of the damage a couple of weeks from now.

I decided to remove some of clutter of my blog design and go for a simpler look.  If you frequent my blog often you may need to refresh this website by hitting F5.  That should clear your cache for the old look.

While everyone knows of the Blue Bird of happiness, well I've encountered the Blue Jay of happiness.  This cutie has been hanging out in a group of my older brugmansia seedlings for a couple of weeks now.  It tends to hang out near me when I'm out there and as you can see, it does not seem to be afraid either.  Could this be love???

While much of the east coast is covered in snow this weekend, many of my brugmansia were dusted with what can only be called 'Florida Snow'.  This snow is actually a shower of stamens from a couple of nearby giant eucalyptus trees that happen to be in bloom right now.  At least this snow will not harm my plants!

I would like to welcome my new blog readers that came over from Blotanical.com.  Thanks for the nice comments.  Please visit often to see what surprises my hybridizing efforts produce.

I had a major event over the weekend so I missed a couple of days of new bloom pictures.  I'll make uip for it this week by posting a few extras.  I'm heading out now to see what is blooming this morning.