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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 / Sunday, December 16, 2007 / Categories: Hybridizing, Brugmansia, Seedlings

Pods, pods, and more pods!

pods.jpgBy Christmas I'll be encountering another major flush of blooms on my brugmansia plants.  Before I go crazy cross pollinating blooms I decided to take a pod inventory to see which of my earlier crosses actually took.  I was shocked to see that I had over 150 seed pods in various stages of development.  I only counted them if they were at least an inch or two long and fattening up.  I probably have another 50 that are still small and haven't made it past the stage where they could easily be dropped by the mother plant.  Of course there is no guarantee that all of these will continue to grow into mature pods, but odds are most will.  The equates to lots of seeds.

If you are not familiar with brugmansia, they set different size pods depending on the cultivar.  Some may be as large as a cucumber, while others may be egg shaped and about the size of chicken egg.   You'll find all sorts of shapes and sizes in between.  The pods usually take a minimum of three months to mature and can take lots longer.

Now that I know which crosses took I can plan my hybridizing strategy for the next set of blooms.  If you happen to see me strolling around my yard with a headlamp and forceps on Christmas Eve, you know what I'm doing.


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