I had a great weekend! I received a gift of 2 big bags of potting soil and set about repotting some palms that were outgrowing their containers. In the past summer a kentia palm (Howea forsteriana) that I've had since it was a seedling doubled in size over the summer so it was rewarded with a new roomier pot.
Since it's getting late in the season and we could have our first frost/freeze at any time here in Florida's Big Bend, and since I had a surplus of lovely potting soil, it seemed the perfect time to take cuttings from the angel trumpets. These spectacular tropical plants often grow to over six feet tall with huge foot long trumpet-shaped flowers hanging straight down from the branches. The flowers of the species, Brugmansia suaveolens, and of its many popular hybrid children are white or in shades of yellow and pink. All of the angel trumpet are pleasantly fragrant and easy to grow even if you don't live in the tropics.
Here in Zone 8 where I garden, the angel trumpets are killed to the ground by the first hard freeze of the season. The roots survive and new shoots appear when warm weather returns later in the season. It's usually about mid-summer before they're ready to bloom again. I like to have as many of these beauties around as soon as possible so I took some cutting to root. These will establish themselves over the winter and then when "all danger of frost is past" I'll set my rooted cuttings out in the garden, spoil them with lots of liquid fertilizer and by May I should have lot's of flowers on more angel trumpet plants than ever before!
If you have an angel trumpet plant or a neighbor with one, just cut pieces of stem in about 12 to 18 inch pieces, remove any leaves and insert the lower 1 to 2 inches into a container of sterile potting soil. Using a rooting hormone product like Rootone will insure success by inhibiting the funguses that cause rot and hastening the rooting process.
With the addition of my 12 new angel trumpet plants next summer I think it's going to be just heavenly around here. Oh, and I still have some potting soil and Rootone left...
Visit Floridata to read more about the angel's trumpet ( Brugmansia suaveolens) and it's cousin the devil's trumpet (Datura inoxia var. quinquecuspida) which is prettier than the name suggests...