Hello Brugmansia Group!
I am usually on the Decorating Forum here at GW but I have a couple questions about my Brug and I'm hoping someone here can provide the answer or direct me where I can go to search for the answer.
Here's my story - how I fell in love with Brugmansia.
My Brug was already here when we purchased the house almost 25 years ago.
The house was one step up from condemned when we purchased it (Sold As-Is) so we focused on the interior, getting it livable.
At the time I did notice 2 thick 'sticks' out back but we were way too busy with the inside for me to concern myself with sticks growing out of the ground.
It was almost 2 years before we got to the back yard other than a quick mow and weed whack to keep from getting reported to the city. *grin*
It was then I noticed that the two thick sticks had grown much taller and had teeny tiny, almost lime green leaves starting to sprout about half-way up.
Keep in mind at the time I knew zilch about plants.
Except for the potato with toothpicks stuck in it to prevent it from falling into the glass of water on the kitchen window sill, that's all I knew.
We started some DIY landscape ---- heavy turn-over of decent soil, removing other really bad (hard clay) soil and leveling the ground.
Set up the swing set and that's as far as we got.
I thought of pulling out the sticks but ran out of time and we were off to another major DIY project.
Five years later, a few more thick sticks, all rather tall and some really pretty light green leaves but nothing that looked like a flower.
I decided to cut off the really woody/dead sticks, water the remaining sticks and see what happens---hoping for leaves to get bigger so that I could put some shade plants in pots under the large leaves.
Leaves did get larger but nothing resembling flowers so about a year later I purchased some of those time-released seed-looking vitamins and threw a handful at the base of the stick bush.
Another year went by and I purchased some little 4" pots with impatiens and tiny ivy, planted them in terracotta pots and put them under the now very large leaves of my stick bush.
Following year the impatiens had gotten very leggy so I went to the library and found out I had to cut them back.
I went out to cut them back and to my surprise, there was a funny-looking tube hanging off my stick bush.
I watched patiently, waited and sure enough a few days later I had 4 more tubes hanging off my stick bush.
Back to the library to find out what it was called.
That night we had our bedroom window open with a fan propped in the window for some cool air.
I kept getting the scent of orange blossom in our bedroom.
Back to the library and learned more about my now precious stick bush.
It was a little after that, I realized, I was falling in love!
Since then I've cut, pruned, removed spent trumpets as soon as I see them, lovingly taken great care of and given my Brug the place of honor as my focal point in the back yard.
And to think I almost pulled out those stupid sticks!
{{gwi:569954}}
Now, my questions:
1. Never have I had something eating the leaves as I do now.
Over the years, I'd see a couple little holes in the leaves, but nothing like what's been happening the last three weeks.
Every evening just after dusk I pull any eaten leaves off my Brug.
Every morning I am finding 10-20 leaves munched on.
I even used a broken piece of Brug, stuck it in some dirt in close proximity to the original Brug hoping whatever was eating my Brug would go over to the smaller, younger leaves on the little Brug stuck in dirt. No such luck.
I don't like using pesticides of any kind because I have Hummers, lots, feeders and bird baths.
Can anyone suggest anything that might keep the munchers away from my Brug?
{{gwi:569955}}
2. The last week I'm noticing the tube that holds the flower is getting brownish and crispy even before the flower has bloomed all the way.
Any suggestion as to what might be causing this?
{{gwi:569956}}
Thank you so very much for any advice you can give and also for reading this far.
Amity
karyn1
neonposey
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