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indigo264nm

A different way to grow Brug

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Everybody who has grown Brugmansia before knows that it loves to twist, turn, put out random branches and shoot out suckers... and around this time last year the Syzygium on our deck in the big ornamental pot was far too rootbound and slowly dying, so I had to think of a substitute that didn't involve any money and would still look amazing, and I remembered reading that Brugmansias could be grown as what is known as a standard.

To those who don't know, a standard tree\shrub in horticultural terms refers to a plant that has been trained to end up with one bare central trunk and a dense ammount of foliage on top.. you often see Camelia's for sale like this where the foliage has been pruned into a ball.

The method was quite simple and didn't require too much maintenance -

Firstly I pruned off a nice straight 30cm healed tip cutting, with 10cm to end up under the soil.

After growing roots it was put into a 6" pot with full sunlight, and rotated 45 degrees every week or so to stop it from bending towards the sun. Any new shoots were removed as soon as I saw them to encourage the plant to grow upwards and not outwards as well as making sure that any scaring to the trunk would happen whilst the wood was still green. Every time a sucker emerged I dug down and removed it.

A few months later it was transplanted into a bigger pot and the pruning\rotating remained the same. Fertiliser was just osmocote and mixed into the soil each transplant.

Finally it was ready for the big pot, and I made sure I got the best potting mix available specifically designed for terracotta pots and tubs. Not long after that I was considering topping it but then nature did it all for me as the plant tried to flower and I kept removing the buds since it was too young.

Now a year later, this is the result of my experiment.

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Awesome. I find that everytime a flower forms the branch splits into two.. how will this affect the effect (i hope got them the right way around!) of your plant?

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Awesome. I find that everytime a flower forms the branch splits into two.. how will this affect the effect (i hope got them the right way around!) of your plant?

That's right.. basically so far on the previous attempts to flower (the buds were picked off or fell off by themselves) the plant seems to have done all the pruning for me. I assume that it is just going to do the same thing this time - resulting in exactly what you want in a standard, which is a very dense canopy on top. Lots of little branches with lots more little nodes for more flowers next time.

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Now a year later, this is the result of my experiment.

Isn't that just how Brugmansia grows? All of the ones I've seen at about that height grow quite similarly?

I find that everytime a flower forms the branch splits into two.

The Y branching is how Brugmansia genus expresses sexual maturity.

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nice, that was the plan with my sp tantra, I guess most have a tendency to go top heavy, but the single stem I have never seen before. Love it

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Isn't that just how Brugmansia grows? All of the ones I've seen at about that height grow quite similarly?

Nope... Brugs don't tend to grow like that unless you make them - the plant from which the cutting was taken looks like this:

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Wow - thats the most perfect looking brug I think I've seen yet Indigo! I could imagine a heap of brugs trained to standards along a porch or verandah - that'd be sweet :) You have done well to keep her trained mate, and it has certainly paid off!

Well Done!

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Cool. It looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, hehe.

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nicely grown brug. Brugs are one of my favourite flowering plants along with orchids and cacti. I hope you dont mind me adding a few pics of what i have flowering at the moment. Here is one of my hybrids along with a white suaveolans.

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peace

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I hope you dont mind me adding a few pics of what i have flowering at the moment. Here is one of my hybrids along with a white suaveolans.

Not at all.. they're sooo pweetty.

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beautyfull!

what i did with my standard brug was to let a new water shoot come up and become the new single stem.

thats because once the brug is 3 years old or so, the new shoots from the bottom will be stronger (and grow faster in diametre) than the old original stem. this happens because after 3 years the roots are far better developed and are than able to put on far more growth.

this second standard stem, will perform much better, than the first one.

brugmansias are ideal for prunning them into any shape, the most amazing one i ever saw was a sanguinea, shaped into a love heart!!

brugmansias are very popular in my home country austria, and what i did there was to dig out the plant once winter was comming and simply stored the single prunned back stem, with an big as possible rootball, in a dark cool cellar, till planting it out again in spring.

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beautyfull!

what i did with my standard brug was to let a new water shoot come up and become the new single stem.

thats because once the brug is 3 years old or so, the new shoots from the bottom will be stronger (and grow faster in diametre) than the old original stem. this happens because after 3 years the roots are far better developed and are than able to put on far more growth.

this second standard stem, will perform much better, than the first one.

brugmansias are ideal for prunning them into any shape, the most amazing one i ever saw was a sanguinea, shaped into a love heart!!

brugmansias are very popular in my home country austria, and what i did there was to dig out the plant once winter was comming and simply stored the single prunned back stem, with an big as possible rootball, in a dark cool cellar, till planting it out again in spring.

Thanks for the good advice.. definitely keen to try :).

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brugs are amazing grown as standards! otherwise i agree they just look messy to me.

edit- beautiful shots prophet! hows things mate?long time no speak!!

as always ur plants look in amazing condition!! u must post us more pictures of ur amazing garden. how r those kk cactidoing?

Edited by jono

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producing a standard is easy. easier if u seed grow. just keep rubbing ofside-shoots on the stem with ur hand until it reaches the hight uwant, keep vigilant with the sideshoots on the stem and u havea standard brug. no bigee.

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producing a standard is easy. easier if u seed grow. just keep rubbing ofside-shoots on the stem with ur hand until it reaches the hight uwant, keep vigilant with the sideshoots on the stem and u havea standard brug. no bigee.

Hahaha I never said it was hard... I was merely showing people a way to have a nice clean looking Brug that went from cutting to a first flush of 30+ flowers within a year.

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Beautiful work Indigo, that Brug looks amazing! Will definately be giving that a go in the near future.

Thanks for sharing.

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vey nace... add the two critters in that picture and you will have a nice drink of 'cimora'

(south american drink with san pedro and brugmansia)

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I'd just about given up on a nice potted brug for my back veranda, thats a real winner, im inspired to try again. haha I like the look of its neighbours too!

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Indigo, that's gorgeous.

*looks at his brug seedlings*

Think mine'll be awhile...

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At the risk of repeating whats already been said......well done.......!!

one of the nicest photos ive seen in a looooong while...(nice photo......nice plants!!!!)

T.

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Okay... so that photo of the young brug was when I was living at my parents house. It got too big for it's boots (well pot) and was moved into the ground out in the backyard and left to grow unattended. I went up there for Christmas and was blown away at the flowerage as there would have had to be hundreds of em, although no longer being a standard shaped plant.

I could smell it all the way from the back deck at night, over my cigarette might I add. Figure it's worth showing a pic I took on my phone considering it's only 4 or so years since I took the cutting which was pulling off flushes of 30+ flowers at one year old. I wanted to take a photo from underneath but there were soooo many bees around the flowers.

Excuse the quality - I took it in the evening when there was fuck all light.

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Oh and while I'm at it I took another low light shot off the back deck of the A. maidenii I planted from seedling in the background and in the foreground you'll notice my broad and narrow leaf Catha's which have grown pretty damned tall since my last visit... The fence is 8ft high as a guage of height.

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good job, nice of you to update this. dying to get some catha.. some time ...

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