Recently in Random thoughts Category

A few weeks ago I started my second greenhouse project for Sommer Gardens, a new hoop house.  This project followed the completion of a large shade house friends and I constructed during the holidays. While I really wanted to build a nice greenhouse with a heater and fans, finances dictated I switch to a less expensive hoop house kit.

The kit arrived on a 16 foot pallet, three quarters of a ton of tightly bound galvanized steel pipe ready to be assembled. Its new home was going to be an open air growing area on the north side of our recently completed shade house project.  This area had been cleared of plants earlier when the shade house was completed and the plants relocated inside it.

The first step was to level the land.  The area had a 2.5 foot slope from one corner to the opposite corner.  Once the ground was fairly level we assembled the hoops and set the supporting poles in concrete around the perimeter.

The following day we installed a perimeter rail and raised the hoops.  The hoops were then secured with purlins to bind them together.  After that we constructed the end frames which further secured the structure and will eventually support a sliding door.


With the structure now complete, the sand floor was covered with ground cloth and the sprinkler system assembled.  I opted not to bury the sprinkler pipe in case I decide to change the sprinkler type down the road.  When completed, this hoop house will be used to grow out seedlings and plants for my online store that opens in a few weeks. I also be using it for propagation.

My Angel Trumpets will have a nice surprise soon when they are covered with a new shadehouse I'm building with the help of friends during the Christmas Holidays.  When completed there will be just under 9,000 sq ft of growing space under the cover of shade cloth.  During the winter growing season a layer of clear poly will add additional protection should we have sub-freezing weather.

The toughest part of the construction project was sinking 80 sixteen foot 4x4's amongst my brugmansia.  Our current muggy, summer-like weather made the job even more challenging.

Unfortunately I could not match the footprint of the new shadehouse to the current footprint of my existing growing area, so lots of plants had to be relocated to make room for the rows of 4x4's.  Below you can see a bed of large brugmansia seedlings that had to be divided in order to set the row of 4x4s.

Even my larger stock plants, which are allowed to root themselves in the ground, had to be yanked up and relocated.

Because my growing area has a slight slope to it, the height of the roof ranges from 10ft to 13ft.  This will allow me to place even the largest brugs in my collection under shade.  I went with a 30% shade cloth to allow as much light as possible in during the winter, yet protect and cool my plants in the heat of summer.  The shadehouse will be totally enclosed which should make it easier to keep the pests under control, especially the caterpillars.

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!

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!

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 I was home for lunch today I managed to capture a photo of the space shuttle launch.  Here it is taking off over the horizon.

Even though I'm smack dab in the center of the state, shuttle launches are still dramatic.

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.

Just before dusk tonight I spotted this rainbow illuminating the sunset lit sky.   The real pot of gold at the end of this rainbow is the cool weather that is moving in on Saturday.

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!

There's a reason why my garden blog has become stagnant, it's called too much nice weather!  When the weather's nice outside, I spend all my free time working on my plants. Then when I'm done I'm too tired to blog.  I figure I have just under 9,000 brugmansia seedlings growing now.  I'm not sure why I let this number get so out of control, but every time I have a seedling bloom that is a potential keeper it makes it all worthwhile.

I have lots of notes and pictures to share in the new year so please stay tuned.  I hope to have my new website up by mid-January followed by my online store in early February.  So if you are looking to purchase some Angel Trumpets, check back soon.

Now I just need some cold and rainy weather to keep my indoors and force me to work on the website....