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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 ...

It has been six months since my last post, but I have a good excuse for not writing. Tending to my thousands of baby brug seedlings takes precedence over blogging.  Since my last post I have started seeds from over 150 new crosses.  That equates to about freshly potted 3,000 liners, 75 four inch pots of seedlings waiting to be moved up to liners, 30 four inch pots of seeds recently planted and waiting to sprout, and over 1,000 liners that I just moved up to 1 gallon pots.  Add all this to ...

Today I was able to assess the actual damage my plants incurred from our holiday freeze. My brugmansia are all sprouting new growth and in many cases, buds are beginning to form as well.  Out of the 1500 brug seedlings I have, I think I only lost one.  Almost all of my in-ground brugmansia survived too.  I had at least 75 individual  plants planted in the ground and every single one of them survived. Most just had damage to the tender growth, but a couple of the younger ones were beat up ...

So much for getting a yellow double brugmansia for Christmas. The bloom is fully open now and it is white.  Darn that Grinch! The bloom is a nice healthy sized bloom with a fragrance so I'll keep it around for a few more bloom cycles to see what it does. The day after I shot the picture below it started getting a faint pink hue to it.  Unfortunately I accidentally snapped the bloom off as I was examining the inside of the flower.  Now it is time to play the waiting game as new buds are ...

My brugmansia Ambrosia x Creamsicle bloom is almost open but the color has not changed much.  It is still a cream to light yellow color.The bloom does have a nice texture to it and it looks like it will be well shaped double flower.  It also has a pleasant fragrance associated with it.  Now if I could only inject some yellow color genes into it I may have a keeper on my hands.

One of the toughest parts of growing out brugmansia seedlings is waiting for the blooms to open.  Sometimes it takes weeks for the buds to open.  Of course the more you watch them, the longer it takes them to open.  With brugs, the dominant color is white.  For me this equates to about every three out of four seedlings I grow having white blooms.  This monster bud is playing with my mind right now.  I know it is going to at least be a double bloom and it appears to have a yellowish tint to ...

That's the story with this brugmansia.  It is a cross between Miss Caylie and Genevieve and is one of several plants I have growing from this cross.  Here's what the flowers looked like when the plant first bloomed in November. It was so ugly it almost ended up in the compost pile.  Knowing that the first blooms a seedling produces may not resemble the flowers the plant produces as it matures, I decided to let the plant stay for a couple more rounds of blooms.  Over the weekend the second ...