Recently in Ramblings Category

We were doing some cleaning in our office and I came across this vintage areal photograph of Sommer Gardens circa 1984.  This photo shows my retail garden center on US hwy 27 just north of Clermont.

Note the results of the devastating back to back record breaking freezes in the early eighties. Those freezes killed off thousands of acres of citrus in Central Florida, forever changing the landscape of Florida.

The building pictured is the old railroad depot that used to sit in downtown Clermont.  My parents bought it in the 1960's and had it moved to HWY 27 and turned it into a roadside citrus packing plant to sell oranges from our family citrus groves. 

I put my first triathlon on in Clermont back in 1984 and a few years (and freezes) later I was out of the nursery/landscape business and working full time in the fitness/triathlon business.

The rest is history...  :)

My first holiday project took about a week longer than I had anticipated to finish, but we wrapped it up just in time.  As we were affixing the last piece of poly film to the roof the nighttime temperature had already dropped down to freezing.

I still have some cleaning up to do around the structure, but for the most part it is 100% completed.

This new shade structure offers just under 9,000 square feet of protection for my brugmansia.  Because it was built on a slight slope, the inside height varies from 9ft tall to 12.5ft.


As you can see with this inside view, it did not take long to fill the place up.

The structure is completely covered with 30% shade cloth and wrapped with an added layer of poly film for the winter.  The poly will be removed in March.  Because the structure has a flat roof, the top layer of poly has small holes every 10-12 inches to facilitate drainage when it rains.

We had below freezing temps for over 8 hours the night we finished and the only brugs that received cold damage were the ones in my yard that were uncovered.  I plan to install a fog system inside to provide additional warmth and protection should we have prolonged freezing temperatures..

Now its time to start project #2, a 24ft x 80ft hoop style greenhouse. Unlike the shadehouse which was built from scratch, the greenhouse arrives as a kit ready to assemble.  They say it is an easy weekend project....we'll see.  :)

It's easy, just catch them with a trap and transport them away to a new location!

Recently I started noticing my cat's food was disappearing at an astonishing rate.  My cat is not a big eater so I knew something strange was going on.  Perhaps the half eaten dog biscuit I found in the kitchen sink should have been a tip-off as to who was to blame.

I borrowed a small animal trap from a friend and set it up in my kitchen before going to bed.   A few hours later I awoke to a ruckus as this rather jumbo sized raccoon was trying to find a way to escape from his new home.  Later that morning I drove him a few miles away from my house and released him.  I reset the trap again for night two and low and behold, his mate ended up in the trap as well!  It has now been over a week since I captured these two and so far no other creatures have ventured into the trap.
   
I live in our old family home that was built in the 20's, and it happens to be in a somewhat state of disrepair.  Unfortunately it is really not a challenge for a creature to find a way to infiltrate my living space.

Now I need to move the trap out to my brug growing area where a family of armadillos is reeking havoc.

As the Friday sun was setting I was out amongst my brugmansia plants looking for blooms to pollinate.  I just happened to glance towards the east and saw a rocket heading skyward.  I'm only about 60 miles from the space center and as long as the sky is clear, launches are easily seen.

If you look at the very top of the photo you can see the rocket.  Because this rocket was carrying a spy satellite, there was no advance notice of the launch.  I'm sure going to miss the shuttle launches when they end.

Take a pick-up truck load of 2 gallon sized pots, 1,500 to be exact.....

and add a mountain of fresh potting soil.....

along with a never ending row of overgrown brugmansia seedlings in one gallon pots.....

Our weather finally became the envy of the nation so I decided this weekend would be a great time to tackle a major nursery rejuvenation project. It was time to expand my growing area to accommodate more plants.  The first step was to clear the ground and treat the soil with a weed killer.  I opted to leave a couple of citrus tree stumps remain rather than crank up the chain saw.  I knew if I did that I would spend the day cutting down trees instead of finishing this task.
 
Once the ground was ready I covered it with ground cloth.  Last spring I covered about 4500 square feet of my growing area with cloth and this year I hope to cover the rest.  The ground cloth keeps my brugmansia plants from rooting in the ground and helps control weeds.  The new area I covered expanded my growing area by an additional 1,600+ square feet.  Last weekend I re-worked my sprinkler system to cover the additional space.

Once the cloth was stapled to the ground I set out to cover it with plants. It did not take long to completely fill the area up with 3-gallon size pots. These plants were originally grouped together to make it easier to cover them for freeze protection.  I'm gambling that we are not going to have another major freeze this winter...which of course means that I'll be grouping them back together again in a few weeks to protect them from another hard freeze.  :)  If we have light freeze or frost, I'll just run the sprinklers overnight to keep the plants from freezing.

It was exciting to see all the tiny buds that are forming on these plants.  If the weather holds, I should have a major Bloom--a-palooza going on towards the end of February!

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.