Open/Close Side Menu
Search
Close
Search

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.

/ Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 9757 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating

Weeds, weeds and more weeds....

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 ...
/ Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 7452 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating

I'm back!!!

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 ...
/ Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 6657 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating

It's official, this winter really has been cold as ice...

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 ...
Categories:WeatherRamblings
/ Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 7892 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating

if you can read this, than I'm one happy guy!

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 ...
Categories:Ramblings
/ Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 8663 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating

Death is in the air...

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 ...
Categories:WeatherRamblings
/ Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 8704 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating

Frozen Florida Orange Juice Anyone?

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 ...
Categories:WeatherRamblings
/ Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 7523 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating

Time for a change...

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.
Categories:Ramblings
RSS
1234

Search the Blog

Back To Top