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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 / Monday, January 28, 2008 / Categories: Hybridizing, Brugmansia, Weather, Seedlings

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.  happyseedlings.jpgAlmost 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 fairly bad. They froze down to the ground, but are already sprouting back up from the base.  Unfortunately we still have 6-8 weeks to go until the danger of another frost/freeze passes.  The old timers will tell you that you are safe after the first full moon in March.  I'm banking on it being the first full moon in January because it just passed.

My seed pods suffered the most in the freeze.  The main reason for this is that most of the pods were on the outer ends of the branches and hence were exposed to the coldest temperatures. My guess is that I lost about half of the pods that had set.  I still have at least 100 pods actively growing and that number will surely increase as my plants come back into bloom and I start pollinating again.  
pppods.jpg

One plant that amazes me is this Pink Perfecktion plant that has 18 seed pods on it...and it is only 2 1/2 feet tall!  My Inca Sun is the one with the most pods.  It has at least 30 pods hanging on it now, and that's after I removed a bunch of ones that were not planned.  I left 8-10 unknown pods on it so I would have plenty of seeds to play mad scientist with.  I plan to treat those seeds with various compounds in hopes of creating tetraploids. 

It is going to be a busy year for me....

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