Links

FREE MULCH   If you live in Lee county, (Fort Myers, Florida and surrounding areas) you can find free mulch from several different sites around Lee county. These are all run by the county government. The link provided will fill you in on the details.

If you want to get serious about growing brugmansia, you should join BGI, the best brugmansia organization around! Brugmansia Growers International has thousands of dedicated members and hybridizers, all willing and able to help you learn more about your collection and how to care for it. A must have resource for those taking the culturing and hybridizing of brugmansia a little more serious. There is also a classifieds section.

Another plus, is that after you join, you are allowed seed draws (from the BGI seedbank) made by the hybridizers themselves, from many hard to find and breathtaking brugmansia cultivars. These crosses are next to impossible to find without BGI, and they are free to subscribing members! You also get pollens from many different brugmansia here too, as well as datura seeds!

Huanduj: Brugmansia, is an excellent new book to add to your brugmansia book collection. Written by Alistar Hay, Monika Gottschalk, and Adolfo Holgun, no serious gardener should be without it. Available from the University of Chicago Press,here is just one of the reviews: "Huanduj: Brugmansia combines original field and botanical research with horticultural expertise and the review of more than six hundred bibliographic references spanning the sixteenth century to the present day. It covers every aspect of the plant from its history, anthropology, and ethno-botany, to its taxonomy, biology, pathology, biotechnology, and its cultivation both as a garden plant and for its psychoactive derivatives. Beautifully designed and extensively illustrated with examples of species and cultivars, this comprehensive volume is an excellent resource for anthropologists, botanists, biologists,...". Available now at link provided.

Brugmansia and Datura: Angel's Trumpets and Thorn Apples is also an excellent reader's choice when learning more about the care of Angel Trumpets. Written by Authors by Ulrike Preissel and Hans-Georg Preissel, there are many beautiful full color photos. Warm and Cold Group are discussed at length. The Authors make it easy to understand more about this beautiful and mysterious tree. Available at Amazon, there was a time a few years ago you just couldn't find this book. Recently it has reappeared, good news for the Brugmansia community.

Mom & Pop Vapor Shop Truly, if you want to quit smoking cigarettes, try vaping.Mom & Pop's Vapor Shop has hands down the best electronic cigarette nicotene laced flavors around. Slowly wean yourself down in milligrams, until you quit if you like, or just keep vaping, there are no chemicals like cigarettes. Try Pchela's & Butterfly Bait. These juices are to die for! Great, courteous service with a smile, Tammi mixes the best e∼juices ever created, really!!!And if you have a question, Pop (Eric) will be more than happy to accomodate you...also with a smile. A really wonderful online shop to do business with.

Plants and Stuffhas some excellent products as well as reading material on supplements we can use as regular gardeners to enhance our plants and flowers. Humic and Fulvic acids can be had here, which are fantastic at helping out our brugmansia and get them blooming.

Friends of the Forest is a foundation that educates children and adults alike about our national parks and the trees and animals that live there. How we can help. Great website!

The Butterfly Estates is a wonderful southwest Florida attraction where you can not only view hundreds of different species of butterflies, but also enjoy a delicious lunch or dinner. Have tea at lunchtime! Located in the downtown river district of Fort Myers, you will find The Butterfly Estates a great place to visit. Beautiful conservatory, great place to get hitched too!

Axiom is sold by RxGreenSolutions and works wonders on the harder to kill fungus and viral issues you might have with your growing collection of plants. An expert's choice, Axiom is really great for fast treatment.

Actinovate is an organic and natural way to fight fungal attacks on your prized plants. Down here in South Florida, it is quite humid and this stuff stops the problem. A soil additive, Actinovate is really a bacteria that works by eating the fungi in the soil. It halts what might otherwise become a systemic fungi that gets into the plant material. I use it on cuttings, my brugs, and all my other plants.

Superthrive is a great vitamin and hormone liquid nutrient addition to your plant's fertilizer mix. It really works, at least for me. Bigger, brighter leaves, healthier plants, bigger blooms, and more blooms all make this stuff a winner with me. Available locally at your Lowes, or online with the link provided.

SeaCrop Soluble Kelp Powder is an awesome addition to your fertilizng and foliar feeding routine. Available at Brugmansia Growers International in powder form, a little goes a very long way, so it lasts quite a while. This product does wonders for the leaves and flowers of your prized brugmansia.

Buglogical pits insect against insect. A large number of beneficial insects of all kinds, that biologically fight your garden woes. Nematodes too, which can kill over 200 underground pests. If you want to stay organic, give them a look.

The Bamboo Farm in Punta Gorda can help you choose which (or how many) species of bamboo you might be interested in growing. There are bunching types, runner types, and some that make great privacy hedging. Quick to help you in your bamboo endeavors, and fairly priced at varying pot sizes. If you are in the area, it is a nice place to visit, and educate yourself about bamboo.

Rosemania is a website for gardeners who face an onslaught of garden pests, fungal issues, or arachnids like spidermites. Geared towards professional gardening, they are sure to please you with the large selection of organic and non∼organic ways you can keep your garden growing without interference from the myriad of insects and fungus out there to kill our efforts.

Wolfram Alpha is a spectacular alogorithim based search engine for scientific data! I love it because it will easily translate a simple plant name into all scientific information on that plant. It works for other scientific data too, but I mainly use it on plants. Definitely a must see, must use website for anyone doing further research!

More In∼Depth Reading For Gardeners

Grow Coontie From Seed. This Florida native cycad was almost wiped out not too many years back, but has since been making a comeback. Learn more about this beautiful, fern∼like cycad and how you can grow your own from seeds! Will grow up to zone 8B, for those gardeners who want something unusual and primitive looking in their landscape. An expensive plant to purchase, this well written article about the plant and how to germinate it is well worth a read. Written by Steven J. Hazen, M.D., Master Gardener

And if you are into Florida butterflying, grow the coontie for the butterflies whose caterpillars it supports. Here is an excellent read on that: Flickr Photos and story of the Atala and Peacock butterfly by Jungle Mama.

                                                               

USDA Plants Database Do a search here, read up on your plant of interest, or just browse around and learn about new research going on in the plant kingdom. Great website, full of information.

Hurstwood Brugmansia Blogspot is a phaenomenal blogging website full of breathtaking photography of Alan's own cold group brugmansia crosses. Just one look at these coldies will have you hooked! A British brugmansia hybridizer, you are sure to be intrigued by Mr. Hurstwood's red, lavendar, and all colors inbetween; cold group brugs. Alan is also closely coming to a true blue brugmansia, in the cold group.

Fungus Gnats are a nasty little insect that can get at your brugmansia from not only the surface of the soil, but also the root system, desscimating the plant! To learn more about them, try this University of Mass. link

Want to see an almost blue brugmansia flower? Click here! After clicking my link, look to your left at the menu, and click again on 'The Dream Color, blue.' The famous Ludger Schneider and friend Dirk, have been working on this for some time. Ludger is a German hybridyzer of brugmansia (just read through the gallery here and the cross creator to verify this) and you will want to view this page. Cold group brugmansia throws flowers of true reds. When hybridized, they can become lavendars, and almost blue. If you will ever see a blue brugmansia, it will be from the cold group.

Keyhole Gardening? Ever heard of it? It is a very creative gardening technique that involves recycling your own kitchen waste quickly and efficiently, almost instantly turning it into useable ferts for your veggies. An excellent sustainable gardening technique that should be used more often here in the New World. Great reading! Sustainable Gardeners, read onwards! By Deborah Tolman, Ph.D.

Although the website is a tad dated, the information here is outstanding. A lot of non∼toxic insect pest removing recipes, and other great green recipes and reading of various garden and lifestyle ideas. Worth a look, especially if you are into organic gardening and home remedies, imo. Len's Garden

Brugmansia World is run by an Aussie named Shaun, and he keeps a web∼blog full of beautiful brugmansia photos from the world DownUnder, and some of his takes on them. A definite brugmaniac, like a lot of us, Shaun's blog can expand your views on brugs. There is no importation of plant material allowed between Australia and the U.S., all the more reason to visit his blog andtake a look at what wonderful cultivars they are developing in that part of the world.

Beautiful Wildlife Gardening has set up a 15 course EcoGardening Essentials tutorial to help those gardeners who'd like to get more involved in the natural order of things. Written by Carole Sevilla Brown, a resident of Philadelphia, Pa. A very good tutorial, and you and the environment will both be the better for reading through it. Also a great learning tool for young naturalists and teachers alike.

Flowers of India.net is a fantastic resource of identifying photos of leaves and flowers of many trees of India. This resource is also great for those of us who don't live in India, but have imported blooming trees from India. I found several of my own trees here. There is detailed descriptions, and common and scientific names listed.

2012 Agricultural Frost Zone Maps, Updated, Choose Your State, then learn what new climate zone you live in. The USDA has updated the agricultural zone maps since global warming started kicking in. It isn't what you thought it was, the world is warming up and zones are changing more frequently.

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