Sunday, January 3, 2010 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 7892 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating Mounds of snow? Thank goodness no, but the billowy white frost cloth sort of gives the appearance of snow mounds from a distance.With a long spell of cold weather in the forecast this week, I covered many of my in-ground brugs with frost cloth. Hopefully this will provide a few extra degrees of warmth, enough to keep them from experiencing the freeze damage they would incur if I did not cover them. The large covered plant on the right in the photo below is a 8 foot tall Cherub. It was just getting ready ... Categories:Weather Tags:Angel TrumpetBrugmansiabrugscold weatherfreezefrostfrost cloth Read more
Saturday, January 2, 2010 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 7365 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating I hate cold weather...and so do my Brugs!!!! Well it looks like we are going to start the new Year off with a bang! The National Weather Service has just issued freeze warnings for Sunday and Monday mornings.This graphic above is the forecast from AccuWeather.com. I like Weather Underground's forecast better, a low of 31 for both Sunday and Monday mornings. Two degrees can make a big difference with my Angel Trumpets. I have found Weather Underground to be historically more accurate around here than AccuWeather.Well, I know what ... Categories:Weather Tags:Angel TrumpetBrugmansiafreezefreeze warningfrostweather Read more
Thursday, December 31, 2009 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 6664 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating Frosted Brugmansia Yesterday morning it dropped down to 34, cold enough to generate some scattered frost amongst my Angel Trumpet seedlings. This sort of caught me off guard because I did not see any frost warnings in the forecast. I could have easily scheduled the overhead sprinkles to come on in the wee hours of the morning, protecting my plants from frost.The damage was only to the upper most, tender growth. I did not see any damage to the stems or to the more than 100 seed pods currently developing on ... Categories:Weather Tags:Angel TrumpetBrugmansiafrostfrost damage Read more
Saturday, October 17, 2009 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 6840 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating An Angel Trumpet Pot of Gold 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. Categories:Random thoughtsWeather Tags:Angel TrumpetBrugmansiapink perfektionrainbow Read more
Monday, October 12, 2009 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 7614 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating Where is our fall weather??? Geeze, what's up with this weather. I went out at 12:30am to look for new blooms and the temperature was 81 degrees out!!! That is about 10 degrees warmer than it should be for this time of year.Orlando set a new record high of 93 on Sunday. It was actually a couple degrees warmer out here in Clermont.The good news is that a cold front is supposed to come down next weekend and drop our temps down to the normal zone for October.I'm ready! Categories:WeatherRamblings Tags:Angel Trumpetbrugsweather Read more
Saturday, February 14, 2009 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 11094 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating To sow or not to sow.... 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ... Categories:HybridizingWeatherSeedlings Tags:angel trumpetsBrugmansiabrugspodsseed podsseeds Read more
Friday, February 6, 2009 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 7805 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating 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 ... Categories:BrugmansiaRandom thoughtsWeatherSeedlings Tags:BrugmansiabrugsfreezeSeedlings Read more
Monday, January 28, 2008 / Author: Sommer Gardens / Number of views: 11602 / Comments: / Article rating: No rating How many days till Spring? 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 ... Categories:HybridizingBrugmansiaWeatherSeedlings Tags:Brugmansiabrugsfreezeseed podsSeedlingsseeds Read more