Autumn-Winter Brug Care

11 years ago

Evening Brug buddies. Hope everyone's doing well. I have a potted 6ft tall Brugmansia Suaveolens which also has a 4 ft baby Brug growing alongside it in the same pot. Both have bloomed twice this yr. Now that my weather has turned cooler (70's in the daytime with low humidity & 50's at night), I was wondering if any of you could kindly advise me what steps I need to take now in order to prepare my Brugs before the first frost? Last month they put out quite a nice flush of flowers but this month I've only got 4 blooms. There are tons of tiny buds on them but some of them dried up & fell off before they even had a chance to grow. Some emerging leaves have developed an alligator like appearance to them after I gave them their usual dose of fertilizer for the week so I'm guessing it's too much for them now & I should cease giving the Brugs any fertilizer now (?). How should I store these things for winter since the pot itself is way too heavy for me to lift into the house & the Brugs are too big to fit through my doors? I don't have a garage or basement, only a shed. Can I put them in the shed over the winter with heavy mulching in the pot as well as heavy duty frost cloth wrapped around the branches or is it best to try & get it in the house? Also, are there any insecticides/fungicides I can use now to try to thwart any problems that might be lurking before my Brugs go dormant? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks tremendously for your help.

Comments (5)

ruth_ann
11 years ago
I will give you a link to a tutorial I did in another forum on bringing them in.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bringing them in for dormancy
ruth_ann
11 years ago
MissMudPuppy, near the bottom of each page in this forum is a 'Search' feature. If you enter the words 'Over Wintering Brugs' and tick to have the search done in 'this forum', you will get 300++ matches to look at.
This is just an example of responses that was given in response to my Tutorial......

Here is a link that might be useful: More info
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starofleviathan
Original Author
11 years ago
THANK YOU ruth_ann for taking the time to reply & for such informative advice! I'm still new to all this so all advice is certainly humbly appreciated. I think I'm going to follow your lead & start creating a little space for my Angels to overwinter in my shed. There's no windows & it offers the best protection against the Nor'Easters we get. I will have to insulate the shed a bit more though just to make sure the temps stay above freezing. What a relief to learn that I can trim mine down so they fit through my door LOL. Not overwatering during the winter months is going to be the tricky part. How did you get your Brugs to spread out in that lovely canopy?
ruth_ann
11 years ago
Mostly I use lots of Mushroom compost and most of those Brugs were ones I started myself from seed and had never been cut back as they were only in their second year of growth. The others that had been cut back go into very enriched soil I just feed the with a balanced (20-20-20) fertilizer about every month.If your soil is healthy and rich you don't need a lot of fertilizer.
I have been growing these for over 15 years I guess and you learn what makes them tick after a while. I have to go at them hard because I plant them out in the ground the first week in June and dig them up the first week in Oct and have them go dormant again. They only get 4 months in the ground to strut their stuff LOL.
starofleviathan
Original Author
11 years ago
Good morning ruth_ann! Hope your day is starting off well :). Kindest regards for your reply! Congratulations that you were able to have success in getting your Brug seeds to grow & thrive :). Wow, over 15 yrs growing these, eh? My hat's off to you! Since this is my first go with these plants, I'm slowly learning what works for me in my area & what doesn't; I discovered mine could not tolerate being in full sun in the summer & preferred filtered, but now that autumn's here it can handle being in full sun. I was alternating feeding them MG one week & a fish & seaweed emulsion the next & my Brugs seemed to like it at first but recently I noticed certain limbs look a bit leggy & they're more leafy than I care for at the expense of flowers so I'm definitely not going to be using MG with F&SW anymore. Way too much nitrogen! Oops! Since this is the baby Brug's first yr of life, should I cut it back or leave it? I know I need to enrich their soil next yr since they're in a pot & have probably used up what was available but since the weather's turning cooler than usual sooner than usual here I don't think I have time to do anything more with them except let them start going dormant. Yours only get 4 months to put on their show? Either way it must be quite a sight. Which has been your favorite to grow?