Wintering your brugmansia

There are numerous methods to overwinter your brugmansia that will give you good results. Among them are storing in a cool greenhouse, garage, crawlspace and in the house.

I'll share a bit of my experiences with each of these methods .

A cool greenhouse is by far the best method if you have one, we keep ours at a minimum of 10C which for the most part keeps them in a dormant state. I'd prefer to go with 5C but we have other plants that live in there that don't do well that cool. Our brugs are moved in before the first frost after all leaves and flowers/buds removed to reduce the introduction of pests. Once they are all in they are sprayed with a miticide and insecticide to ensure they are pest free. Our plants are allowed to go very dry between waterings and then watered very sparingly, over watering is the biggest cause of plant losses due to root rots during the winter months. Keep an eye out for pests, particularly aphids which always seem to make an appearance around January and treat as needed. As with most methods of storing them there will be some die back on the plants from the top down, nothing to panic about as it usually stops on it's own at a node on the trunk.

The next best method I've found is a cool garage, just be sure it won't freeze in there! Treat your plants the same as if they were going into a greenhouse, strip them and spray them before they go inside. Removing the leaves and flowers can be hard to do but it's in your plants best interest and yours too as they will drop every thing within a week or two and you'll be left with a mess to clean up! Again watering very sparingly about a cup or so a month throughout the winter keeping them very dry.

A crawlspace is also an ideal space for winter as the temperature remains fairly constant throughout the winter. Treat your plants the same as if they were going into a greenhouse or garage. If the crawlspace is not high enough to stand them up, no worries just lay they down on their sides.

A cool room with the heat turned off works similarly to garage storage but does tend to stay a bit warmer and plants usually won't go dormant for you.

Another way of storing that we've used in the past that I found on the BGI website years ago was often referred to as the "bucket o brugs" method. This is a great way of storing a large number of brugmansia if space is limited. The picture on the top right of this page is a handout we used to give out at farmer's markets. This one can be a bit terrifying for first timers but it works well! Simply cut your brugmansia up into large woody logs any where from a couple of feet to as long as you want to, we've done eight footers in the past with good results. Make sure you only use hardwood cuttings for this, nothing green as they tend to rot over the winter. Strip down to a bare log, no leaves, flowers or buds. Place them in a good sized bucket with about 4 inches of water and a few drops of peroxide to help keep fungus at bay.. Place in a cool place in the house and forget about them for a week. Change the water every week for the first couple of months and after that you can usually cut back to every second week. Keep an eye out for rotting logs and dispose of any that show signs. Smelly water means you have a problem and you'll probably find a rotting stem in the bucket. Normally roots will start within a couple of weeks to a month and will soon fill the bucket. Springtime simply take them out of the water and pot them up.

My least favorite way to winter them and the one I've found to have the most problems with is keeping them actively growing indoors as a houseplant. Some do it with good results but I don't recommend it. Remember all of the bugs that you encountered or heard about over the summer? When you bring your brugmansia into the house and keep it growing those bugs will also keep growing and breeding. Populations will increase rapidly without the outside predators to keep their numbers down and you will quickly be battling at the very least outbreaks of aphids and spider mites throughout the winter.

One thing to remember is that light during winter storage is not important as you want them to stay dormant. We have kept dormant plants in total darkness for the winter other than the few minutes a week we go in to check and change water.

Any questions about other methods or problems shoot us a message at nicholsonsnursery@gmail.com