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Mutant in paradise... Mutant in paradise...

Mutant in paradise...

Last season I ramped up my brugmansia hybridizing efforts using brugmansias with mutant and deeply serrated foliage.  The results of those...

Fred's Garden Blog

After a nearly five year hiatus, Fred's Garden Blog is back! Now you can enjoy and experience the gardening exploits and adventures of Fred in his quest to hybridize brugmansia and keep his jungle and nursery under control.

Sommer Gardens / Friday, February 6, 2009 / Categories: Brugmansia, Random thoughts, Weather, Seedlings

Mother Nature's Revenge!

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!
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