I'd be interested to know how everyone who has had their brugs either dormant or in the GH over winter decide that enough is enough - they have to go outside. Do you go by date? Temperature? Frustrating lack of space?
Last year my large brugs were outside mid March. Right now mine are still in - I can't seem to make myself let them fend for themselves.
How do you acclimatize them to the outside world?
Winter vacation over
Mid March???? Liz, you're so lucky. We can't put anything in the ground here until Memorial Day and even then we have to keep an eye on the weather.
snow - I'm not sure when Memorial day is.
May 26th. A long way away.
Ooops, I mean May 27th. DD's birthday is the 26th.LOL
This message was edited Saturday, Mar 30th 11:59 PM
Liz...mine go outside as soon as the last frost date is over.
I have to wait just as long as Snow has. But I have all doors and windows of the GH open to let fresh air in. If there is no severe frost, I do this already in April. The heater is turned off at nights.
half of mine are out now under the trees, the other half are going out the minute I get time. but I can't put them in the ground just yet, I might have to do the mad dash to the house still. One of my main things for putting them out now is that I can water with the hose, I have them so packed, it's getting real hard to tell who needs what.
Monika, My greenhouse gets quite hot whenever the sun comes out and goes up to 90 and more degrees. Will it hurt the plants to open the door and windows if say it's 40-50 degrees outside? Will the cool air hitting the Brugs harm the buds that are on them? I have some close to the door so I have been afraid to keep the door open for fear it would harm the plants.
Snow, it does not harm the plants at all. Stowing heat with much humidity makes the leaves cells blow up. It looks like somebody poked tiny holes in before intact leaves.
40 or 50 degrees is in Celsius? Whats the freezing point in Fahrenheit? In Celsius its 0°. Few degrees above 0 I have the windows open and depending on the heating up, one or two doors. Is it correct in english when I say , you have to harden the plants before brought outside?
yes Monika, that's right.
Snow, my plants seem to like the cool, lots had buds on them and still had flowers on some first hard frost right after christmas.
tig, i read the most interesting thing, woman keeps her brugs in 20 gallon plus pots, when a feeze is coming she lies the pots on their sides and covers with blankets. very interesting concept for one in my zone. my babies coming back last spring didn't mind a light frost at all.
Mine stayed pretty until almost Christmas with a little protection from the frost.
Monika, so glad to know that about the cells in the leaves. Sometimes DH forgets to open my green house when I'm not there(like at a plant swap in Fla) and the temps will go over 100F. I came in one day and noticed that the upper leaves on the CG had cells that under a microscope looked like they had "exploded" and was so paranoid that a new virus had found them. I cut off every leaf that had the "holes" and none ever grew on the other leaves. I thought it was probably the heat that did it.
BTW 32*F is freezing
Thank you. It's actually 53 degrees F here today so the door and windows are opened up. Now that I know it won't harm them the door will be open more often on the nice days.
You know, in the pressiel book it says the leaves turn up at night for protection or something, in my view they are reaching up for stars and moon light!!!!
With 40 - 50 F you can open door and windows without worrying.
Well - I've just put out about 25 pots. I hooked up all the hoses, then realized the flaw. The water reservoir that my water comes from is on a mountain top just above me - above the snow line. The water from the hose is still way too cold to use on the brugs.
My brugs is planted out after the last night frost (usually may 20., but in recent years I took many chances and planted out around May 1.).
This year, however, I will try a little earlier. Until we start building the large greenhouse, we use a small, 2.5 x 4 m greenhouse and last week we had - 5 degree celsius and we lost a lot of new seedlings, but the larger plants ("Ida", and others recovered fine and is putting out new leaf buds).
The funny thing with the frozen seedlings was, that 5-6 in each tray froze, but 1-2 in the very same trays survived and is now pottet in individual pots.
Arlene, this is also my impression. These are star plants. Must be, because they are special *lol*I can grow roses and anything else, but I am only passionate about the Brugs :)
Eric, Thanks for all the seeds :) :) :) :) Are they pure versicolors or pure versicolor crosses of yours? (Could be, that Amber Rose" are among them. I won`t miss a single one of the crosses you made, so I sowed 3/4 of the packet and needed a big polystyrene box to do this *lol* :)
Last spring I got a little anxious and planted one of my brugs in the ground. It was just getting to big to keep inside. Well, we had a hard frost. It lost it leaves but just as they had started to come back, it happened again. The third time was the charm. It made it just fine and grew to be about 6-7 ft. tall and 8 ft. wide. This year I'm waiting!!