Hello everyone.
I'm Jeff, I look forward to getting to know you all. I can't believe this place, it's incredible! I accidentally stumbled into Dave's Garden when I was searching for a picture to ID a Passiflora. I quickly decided to join and the rest is history. Heck I'd never heard of a Brug until 2-3 weeks ago and now I'm a freak(Bob says I'll fit right in w/ that criteria). Our gardens are already the talk of the nieghborhood(which isn't saying much), now they're going to be lining up! LOL Man I'm already sleeping w/ some plants due to lack of space. Well the plants are under lamps beside the bed LMAO.
I've been growing Datura's for a couple years now, I just didn't know it. Nobody around here had ever seen a Moon Flower before, our families were coming over at night just to see them open.
Well folks, I need to find room for all these Brug's Bob dropped off and start soaking some more seeds, I just can't wait for spring to sow them. I look forward to chatting w/ you all soon.
JD...or Jeff..........or whatever, I'm sure I've been called worse;). Atleast I get called!
This message was edited Mar 17, 2004 9:03 PM
Greetings and salutations Bruggies;)
Hi there Jeff welcome to Dave's Garden. Well if you are not addicted to brugs you soon will be after you see some of the pictures.
Hi Jeff. I've been reading over on the Vines and Climbers forum about you and your tropicals. I have to go check out how you root them though. Didn't have time to read it all. Welcome to the brug forum and to Daves. It really is a great place to roost when we can't be playing with our plants. Hope Doc set you up with some great brugs. Will be looking forward to seeing some of your summer pictures.
Shirley
Welcome Jeff!
Yep, all it takes is one quick peek....lol
Welcome! You'll love this place!
It was great to meet you Jeff,this is a pretty friendly place,don't be shy,we will do our best to get you hooked on Brugs!
I know you already have a good start!LOL!
Hi there Jeff, welcome!
Bob (Rootdoc) has told us that you were a great guy and really good with plants. Any friend of Root's is a friend of mine.
Welcome Jeff. it won't be long and they will be filling every room and empty space available. Come on spring .. I want my house back!
You already sound like one of us! Sleeping with plants! LOL. WELCOME!!! So glad you have joined us. You can't go wrong with a friend like the Root! We love him dearly! You will fit right in!
I wish I could get a Ficus to look like Jeffs!Whew!
Welcome to the Brug Forum, you will love it here and yes, you will get MORE addicted.. I also have a full house here and some..lol.. but it feels great.. glad root sent you over.. A
Welcome Jeff.I went to school in Olathe about 100 years ago.
I remember snow and never ending wind.
Welcome Jeff, you will surely enjoy Dave's Garden. It is a great group. rutholive aka Donna
JT! It couldn't have been a 100 years ago???
If you want snow and wind, just come to Ohio.......
Hibiscus,it was Navy Control Tower School in 1960.That doesn't miss 100 by much. :>)
Hi Jeff and welcome in Davesgarden! We are a great group of brug fanciers.......and sometimes a little bit nuts LOL!
Welcome Jeff! Yes in no time you will be like the rest of us, wondering what bed you can pull up next for more Brug space. Glad you finally made it here, Root was very happy to find a plant buddy so close to him!
Welcome Jeff from the concrete slabs of New York City. I started about 13 months ago with six cuttings and a packet of seeds. Today I have over 200 brugs from 60 some varieties. "I'm powerless over brugs and my life is unmanageable. But there is a power greater than myself that will restore me to sanity - the Brugmansia and Friends Forum of Dave's Garden." Hang on for a great ride! :-)
Welcome Jeff! :)
Welcome Jeff. This is a great addiction. Glad Root got you addicted.LOL
LOL, Padre, what are the rest of the 12 steps of Brugaholics?
Welcome, Jeff. Pretty soon you will want one of every variety hybridized by God and man. Just wish my DH would let me bring them in the house. LOL
LOL Padre!
LOLOL. Mini, you can't bring plants in the house? I don't have a single room in this house that doesn't have ATLEAST 4-5 plants. Including the bathroom!We built it 2 tall plant ledges in the bathroom(10ft high) and there are thick philodendrons draping all over the walls and hanging in the doorways.When the Doctor came over, I was only "sleeping" w/ a few plants and seed/cutting trays, it's more than doubled since then w/ no end in sight. We have seeds soaking too so I think we'll beat last years record. That was 11 flats w/ all 72 sights filled. I was told this moring I need to go get more heat mats!
We have this thing about getting a HUGE jump on Ma Nature. She's too slow so we start probably 15+ elephant ears and even more canna's right now. I have another 12 brugs ready to plant, I'm rooting 5-6 different Passiflora's. 5-6 tropical hibiscus' trees and another 3 ficus trees, 2 of them are too tall to get out the door upright!LOL Another 4-5 palms waiting for spring... Goodlord, I have never made a list of all the plants we keep over winter + all the others we start indoors!!! I must have a certifiable plant phobia or the like. A phobia of never having enough plants!LOL
It's so worth it. Come Memorial day, Our gardens are already full and all the nieghbor's are dying to know how we do it! My wife has this thing about her elephant ears, THEY MUST be twice the size of everyone elses in town. And they always are ;). Last year we had ears w/ leaves literally 5-6 ft. from tip to bottom.
I'm going through all my Hi8 mm tapes so I can edit out some snapshots to show here.
Well I have to mist my cuts, check all my seeds , sow some more and start soaking even more. I must have plenty of sunflower varieties for my birds to eat on. It's going to be a wonderful summer if the weather cooperates.
Talk w/ Ya'll later!
JD
Man my photo's aren't showing up. Let me try to post another. This 1 is a hybrid we made from Daisy Gloriousis(sp). The original looked just like brown eyed susan's except the center was black. I took seeds from those and ended up w/ a wonderful flame around the center.
Elephant ears in spring. This garden is still in phase 1 of planting;)
My 1st. Datura flower started from seed last year. 1 month later, this 1 had at least 15 blooms at any 1 time. Sadly, this Dat stinks almost like a bitter citronella!
JD, all looking good! I love your new daisy!
Hi JD ,
......... Welcome to you new addiction...LOL
Root is a dear friend even though he's a passionate obsession enabler .
....................Your post reminded me of when my curtain-climbers were small and decided to inform me that I have 254 plants in the house. Whew! It never occurred to me to count them either . If I needed more room , just put up another shelf and plug in another vaporizer. I don't think they even make those anymore.
...Ta-Ta for now, I am going to check out your other posts, assuming there will be pictures . LOL
§hirley
Nice pictures. How could anyone not like elephant ears...they are so tropical looking. Can't wait to see more of your pictures from this summer's gardens.
Welcome, Jeff: There is no hope for you now, you realize! Your garden is most impressive, enjoy Dave's. Sunrize
Hi JLD,
Wow! What gardens! What devotion! It makes me feel a little relieved that I'm not the only one with pots in the basement/dining room/ kitchen/oddroom with bulbs that couldn't wait.
I had never heard of brugs either until I saw a picture here a few months ago. The pictures are just incredible, aren't they? I like the ones that posters have hybridized themselves.
Sheila
Welcome to the addiction of brugs!
Hi everyone and thank you for the picture compliments.
That is only 1 side of the house and makes up a small fraction of our gardens, probably only 1/8 of our gardening space dedicated to flowers and trpicals. Thanks for the daisy compliments too;). I love trying to create new hybrids via hand pollination and any other methods I can find. I need to take more recent pictures of my "clone dome". I think it's the easiest and fastest way of creating what I call clones, everyone around here seems to call them cuttings. I like clones since that is what we are doing and genetically speaking, they are literally identicle plants. Another reason I like growing from clones is that that the clones are already "sexually mature" or "adult" plants that are ready to flower NOW unlike seedlings. This makes a huge difference with indoor flowering. You have to wait months usually before a seedling is ready to flower. With clones, as soon as they root and "take" to transpotting them and you can set your light cycles to 12 hours on and 12 hours off which flips the switch inside the plants. You really need big HID lights or a large amount of flourecents to really make them flower or fruit from what I've ever seen. Where as vegatative growth can use 18 to 24/7 hours of light to grow them up quicker. It's so cool playing and pretending to be Ma Nature to indoor flowering plants.
I can't wait to try brugs in a hydroponic system, talk about turbo charging growth! Man it's amazing to watch and really simple to do once you get the basics down. I've experimented with at least 5 different hydro systems, the only differences in them being the way nutrient is delivered to the plants. I have a couple posts in a forum somewhere that describes plans for 2 different "do it yourself" hydro systems. It's literally the same as growing plants in pots except you use netted baskets and using a fertilizer liquid rather than water. It's too bad plants can't grow as fast in soil. I like faster, it allows me more branches so I can take more cuttings in fall to keep indoors rather than huge plants.
I think I'm going to set up 2 very small(4-6 plants max.) but different hydro systems on the deck this year. I need to since I already have all the gizmo's and parts needed just collecting dust and that's just not right! LOL
I've also played around with aquaponics on a small scale. I have 2 tropical hibiscus I've been using for test patients but you can't offically call this true aquaponics since the nutrient doesn't return to the fish tank.. 1 plant is in soil and gets watered and fertilized just like anyone would do. The other tree is being fed water from 1 of my fish tanks that is connected in a manor that its automated. The waterer is similar to a syphon hose, 1 end is stuck into the soil(I would of preffered a medium like clay pellets so it wouldn't absorb any nutrient and let it flow always) and the other end is sitting in aquarium water at all times. When the plants needs water, this syphon like tube automatically sucks it in from the tank into the plants pot.
The results are 2 totally different looking plants. I forgot to mention that the plant attatched to the fish tank has no direct lighting of any kind, just diffused light from windows. The other plant is under flouresent lamps.
The 1 under the lights that gets hand watered is very thin leaf wise. It has a lot of stretching on the branches and the leaves are very thin and far between. Maybe 1/4 the amount of leaves compared to the other tree.
The tank/auto fed tree has zero stretch in the branches, it's thick and dense/compact leaf wise to the point where you can't really see through the leaves. It has leaves from the trunk to the tips all around where the other has huge gaps between leaves on the long/stretched out branches.
It's been a really neat experiment and wasn't even planned out, someone gave me the watering/syphon tube for the heck of it. The tube was only long enough to reach 1 of the trees, so that's the only reason this all took place! LOLOL. Someday I'm going to set up a aeroponic unit and use unfiltered fish water instead of hydro nutrients. So the water will be constantly recirculating from the tank to the plant bed (filled w/ clay grow rock rather than soil) and back to the tank non stop. FYI, The only difference between hydroponic and aquaponic is the nutrients. Hydro uses salt based liquid nutrient and the aquaponic...well you know, fish poo. There is some scientific terminology that I should be using to describe how/why the aquaponics grow beds work so well for the fish and the plants. The plant beds automatically grow aerobic(hopefully not anerobic) bacteria. Please pay no mind to my spelling or grammar, please. The bacteria are easy to tell the difference between the 2. You ever smell rootrot or stagnant water? That is anerobic bacteria and is only able to grow due to lack of oxygen in the water. If you had a small aquarium air pump in there, it would of grown aerobic bacteria. WHY IS AEROBIC BACTERIA IMPORTANT TO PLANTS? Well it's that kind of bacteria that is naturally found in good garden beds. It eats up and converts say...manuer from just poop to awesome/absorbable fertilizer. With out the bacteria present, that would never happen. Plus, this type of bacteria interacts with the roots of our plants creating hundreds trace nutrients vital to healthy plant growth....
Darnit. This is the point where I get a brain fade from too much typing and thinking. There are a lot more interactions taking place below the surface of our gardens that wouldn't/couldn't happen w/o the bacteria interacting w/ root systems. There is literally a system where the roots produce beneficial "food" for the bacteria and vise versa. If anyone cares to learn more about this, I'd be happy to get my books out and write up more and provide better descriptions of all this schtuff.
I also wanted to show off some photo's of the side by side growth involving my clone domes compared to placing cuttings in water to root or the like. I'll get the camera and do that asap.
I've also added probably 7-10 more hybrid Brugs in seed form to the collection of 10+ brug plants that are dying to move outdoors. It's gonna be 1 crazy summer here, especially since adding Bob to my garden so he has more room to grow out some of his stuff. My goodness, what have we started here?!? LOL
I hope my ramblings haven't taken up too much space or bored anyone to death w/ my semi-technology.
Thanks again;P Jeff
This message was edited Mar 20, 2004 8:26 PM
WOW!
Man...I sure went on a ramble yesterday. I have a bad habit of thinking out loud or in this case...thinking on the board. I had "bugs" on the brain and thinking about amending my soil and helping mothernature by adding more beneficial microbes etc. to the mix..Sorry I brought a hydroponic subject to the wrong forum. I took it for granted that everyone would enjoy hearing about that sorta stuff and how it relates to what we do outdoors naturally.
Do you folks ever have pest problems with brugs or datura's? Bob was telling me about his white fly infestation and I remembered a sight I use for buying beneficial insects to pray on our pests instead of using any chemicals. I buy lady bugs, praying mantis, and a few other tiny flyer's that prey on all kinds of flies and moth larvae. WWW.Planetnatural.com has great ways and ideas for chemical free pest control.
I saw a very sad landscape makeover on tv this am.. There were removing what they called old and over grown plants away from the house so they could start fresh. The plants they removed were all HUGE BLOOMING BRUGS. I couldn't believe it. Very sad.
Well I started out talking about bugs so I'm ending my post with a picture of 1 of my buddies. He and his family are very different than the fuzzy one/s with a bad attitude. These guys must get so addicted to the Passiflora, I can actually pet them while they climb around the flowers on the patio. They get covered with yellow pollen so thick they can barely fly, maybe that why they let me pet them.
Good day all.
Jeff
Jeff I think that is the same show Dravencat it talking about on this thread. http://davesgarden.com/t/422471/
Yes bugs sure do seem to like brugs for some reason. Good site. Thanks for the link .
Another great passionflower pic! Love it!
Do not worry Jeff, everyone has their own style here. And you bring a new slant on things. Very interesting! Sometimes it is so refreshing to hear from new people with new views on gardening.
Welcome to Daves Jeff. Hope you enjoy it.