Over the weekend I began the Great Migration, emptying the greenhouse of all the tender plants. I set them outside, some on the front porch and some near the gravel garden, where they will live for the summer. Over the winter I kept four Brugmansias in the greenhouse, where they managed to hold onto quite a few leaves, and even flowered, filling the greenhouse with a lovely strong scent. Because Brugs are heavy feeders, this year I decided to knock all of them out of their pots, comb out and prune the roots and scrape some of the potting soil away, and then refresh the potting soil with new Dr. Earth-laced soil. Rather than keep trying to find larger and larger pots, I pruned some of the roots away and put them back in the same pots. I hope this process will perhaps enable them to flower sooner than they did last year.
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| Two Brugs waiting to be repotted |
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| I enlisted Nigel's help with tipping the pot onto its side |
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| A few good hard tugs on the central leader, and the plant slid right out. You can see how root-bound it has gotten. |
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| I used a little hand fork to scrape soil away and rough up the roots |
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| In a five-gallon bucket I mixed Dr. Earth fertilizer and potting soil |
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| I put a layer of new soil on the bottom of the pot, then lifted the plant back into the pot and filled all around the edges with new soil, making sure to push and pack the soil all around the newly pruned root ball. |
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| Two repotted Brugmansias |
I read about this process on the Internet, after Googling "repotting Brugmansias." Do you grow them? Have you ever done anything like this?
