Hi there, I have my first brug, and it was blooming when I got it. It is now starting on it's second set of blooms (and am I excited!), so when do I prune it??
This is probably more for Patrick, since our climates are similar. When do I prune? When do I take it into the basement? Also, in pruning, sometimes it is mentioned to cut above the y, and than I read about leaving 6 nodules? What are they? And do I leave leaves? If I cut above a y, I am cutting off the top, or end of the branch, and is that where people have mentioned that the next years blooms come from? Thanks for any help. I have seen the ABDS site. Selma Pacific NW
I'll leave the when to bring it inside to the Northerners....
On pruning,
If you cut a branch that is above the main Y, it'll re-route the energy being used to grow that branch longer down into growing new branches along the remaining portion. The more nodules you leave, the more possible new branches you'll have. Nodules, nodes, also called leaf scars, are the places where old leaves have been and where new branches form. If you see tiny leaves growing out right above an older leaf on the stem, they could become a new branch.
When we bought our first Brug, last year, the guy at the nursery told me to pinch off all of the tiny leaves on the stem but didn't say why. The first (and only) time I did it, I felt horrible taking off the not even an inch long, could have been a branch. So bad that I put that little piece in a pot of dirt, now it's almost 4 feet tall and super bushy.
Pruning seems to be more a matter of choice. If you're going for a tall tree, taking off lower branches will help keep it going up. Or you can keep it at the height you want by cutting off pieces that grow taller than that. You don't actually have to prune it, the only time I cut ours is when I'm planning on rooting cuttings, or if a branch gets damaged and I think the over-all plant will be better (happier, healthier) without that branch.
My basic advice for right now would be, don't get all crazy with the clippers, enjoy the blooms before winter comes.
Lynne
USDA Zone 9b
Heat Zone 10
Bradenton, Florida
Hi Selma...I must point out that you're getting advice from a relative novice...I pruned brugs for winter storage last year for the first time. I certainly invite the other members to chime in and correct me or add to what I say. You've seen the ABADS site...I'd also recommend checking out the BGI site. Both offer a wealth of information. Monika Gottschalk also wrote a very good paperback book titled ENGELSTROMPETEN...I pick up mine and read it often.
So, what I do is remove all the leaves first, except for the smallest leaves at the growing tips. I do this just before the plants go into storage. I withhold water the last few days to sorta say "dormancy time" to the brugs and to make the pots lighter for moving. My goal is to keep the plants outdoors as late as possible with frost damage. I don't remove the leaves or prune for the winter until then. If you had more than 1 brug I'd remind you at this point to sterilize your cutting tools before moving from 1 brug to the next. Brugs can carry some serious viruses that can be transferred by cutting implements or even your hands.
Then I look at the shape the brug has taken so far and decide whether I want to prune any major branches or trunks for shaping purposes (something you might prefer to do in the spring) or to make the plant more compact for storage purposes. At the same time, I'm making decisions on whether I want to remove cuttings for new plants. In our climate, I much prefer to take cuttings early in the fall rather than at winter storage time. So far, it's my belief they're much more of a challenge late in the season when the growth "juices" are getting lazy.
(Don't ya love my scientific terminology?!)
Most pruning is a matter of personal taste...deciding whether you want the brug to have a tree form with 1 or 2 trunks or more of a bush with multiple trunks and/or low branches.
Before I go on with the rest, let's be clear that the area above the LOWEST Y is considered the flowering region. Normally, you won't find flowers on any part of the brug below that Y. Everything below the Y is considered the growing region...all stems...no flowers.
Now, let's assume you're happy with the main structure of your plant & are ready to take cutting and/or cut back the size of the plant. As long as you stay above the lowest Y, leaving stems ranging, say 8"-10" above the Y, you can cut as much off the tops as suits you. For me, I would want to leave at least 1 or 2 Y's higher up on each main branch above that lowest Y. (This is difficult to verbalize without illustrations!)
Within that 8"-10" range, you should have nodes - the places where the leaves were attached to the stems & where also there is a growth point (probably dormant at this point...but they're there!) where new branches will emerge in the spring. If you grow roses and prune the canes above a leaf, you know you'll get a new stem emerge at the point where the leaf joins the stem...this is basically the same scenario.
Now, from the perspective of taking cuttings vs just cutting back for winter storage. In my own terminology, cuttings you take from above a Y are coming out of the FLOWERING REGION. The plants grown from those cuttings tend to start blooming at a much smaller size (therefor sooner) than cutting taken from down in the GROWING REGION (below the lowest Y). They also leave you with shorter plants, at least until a new trunk might arise from down in the root zone someplace and grow taller. One result often seen is flowers lying on the ground! On the other hand, cuttings taken from the growing region will have to grow trunks until the brug decides to form a Y...then the flowering region develops. This takes longer to get the first flowers, but makes for a taller plant. There are arguments and preferences for either approach.
This is a long dissertation, yet doesn't cover everything you could tell about the subject. I probably over-answered your questions, but after reading this, go back and visit ABADS & BGI...see if it all comes together. Feel free to ask more questions. I have posted pics of my brugs coming out of winter storage & sitting just outside my garage door. They're either in my album in our Photo Gallery, or in threads written in the spring. They had some new growth on them, but they may give you an idea what they looked like. I did minimal cutting back on those young brugs...they'll get a much bigger trimming this year.
Again, I invite others to correct or add to this.
Patrick
Brug Moderator
USDA Zone 8b
Heat Zone 3
Sunset Zone 5
SeaTac, WA...one cool place
I determine that by what the temps are doing, weather forecasts, etc. In my area, I'm likely to see first frost in late Oct. If frost is imminent, the brugs get trimmed & go straight into the garage. If I just make the decision that it's about time, I might trim them, then huddled them against the outer house wall & under the roof overhang near my garage door. If the soil is wet (rain?!) they get a change to dry out some before going into the garage.
Patrick
Brug Moderator
USDA Zone 8b
Heat Zone 3
Sunset Zone 5
SeaTac, WA...one cool place
Selma, great question and Patrick, you did a wonderful job of answering. I don't think I could add anything to it. I wish it were possible to take your post about trimming and make it available to people without having to search through the forums for it. It could sure save a lot of time in the future.
Shirley, I agree wholeheartedly. We need to come up with some system in our forum to save and make easily available information like Patrick and many of you have done throughout the threads. It's almost impossible 6 months down the road to remember where all of this valuable information lands within threads. I've copied much of the "pertinent" stuff and filed it in my files but it would be great to have much of the helpful advice where newbies to the forum can find it readily...or the rest of us be able to refer back to it when we need it.
I think we've talked about doing something like that but just haven't gotten around to doing it. I know I've learned so much from all of you while being in this forum. I appreciate and thank all who have been so forthcoming with their expertise. That's what makes this such a great, sharing group.
I have plenty of space to host a F&Q page on my Geocities account ...add free. All we would need is for Patrick to place a Link on the main Brug page and title it " Everthing you need to know about Brugs"....or something like that. Then all we do is Gather some F&Q about brugs and maybe Catagorize them! Anything I could do to help just ask!!...wayne
Wayne Thompson
North Tonawanda,NY
USDA zone 6a/6b
Heat zone 4
Sunset zone 39
Could make a link to the post in the FAQs, similar to the one that's there for hybridizing tips. -- And then fill this post with all sorts of good pruning tips and how-tos... where to cut, how to cut, angling cuts, sealing wounds, etc...
By the way, what's going on with the work being done with the FAQ page, anyone know how that's going? The original thread on this.
Lynne
USDA Zone 9b
Heat Zone 10
Bradenton, Florida
Maybe it would work to just have Patrick copy and paste informational threads or parts of threads in the FAQ so that we don't jam it up with chat. We can always start threads in here if we need information and who knows...maybe some of the answers would be okay for him to add to the FAQ's. Just a thought.
I appreciate everyone's comments and interest in this. Previously, we've had 2 members agree at different times to head up the effort to build our new FAQ's page. A fair amount of time was spent on emails between each of them and me on that subject, but ultimately, neither of them submitted anything. There were no bad words or hard feelings, but you'll rarely see a thread/post now from either of them. I hate to see good members run away over such an issue.
Ultimately, it was decided there's no real reason to recreate all that's been done elsewhere & is available to visit and view without charge. To create an example, I just visited ABADS and BGI to see what they said about winter storage of brugs - I found the following at ABADS (what you don't find on one, you often find on the other..and sometimes at both):
With info already put together like that, why "re-write the book"? As for creating pages hosted on other sites, Bob has previously explained to us reasons why we need to keep it within Network54.
We can post links to ABADS & BGI in our FAQ's page and easily hop over to research as we please. Maybe we could even organize topics, each with a link to the site we found info on (we have permission to link to each of these sites, but not to specific areas within the sites - if we find info on other sites we want to be able to link to, we'll need to request permission from those sites).
Network54 is generally great for our purposes, even tho they lack some of the abilities & features we see on sites hosted elsewhere. The larger hosting facilities are much more expensive to operate...therein comes the membership fees and ads needed to cover the cost of operation. Network54 is free (except for annual fees paid by Bob) and doesn't slap us with ads. I think that tradeoff is very acceptable. We can be a happy forum where we visit & share info and research elsewhere.
All that said, if someone wants to create a more extensive FAQ's page within Network54's parameters, and the others agree you want it, step forward and volunteer to make it happen. We have both current and previous volunteers offering their assistance, but 1 or 2 people would need to spearhead it. It would be set up similar to our Photo Gallery, in that it is actually a separate forum at Network54 where we store data instead of chat. As an example, when you click the link for Photo Gallery, you're transferred to the other forum where it's contained. You click a link there when you want to return to the Main Forum. Each forum has its own ID number. The FAQ's Forum would work the same way, except the info stored there would be organized by topic and entered with a thread for each topic. As individuals, we wouldn't be able to add threads/posts. New info would be added by designated members.
A couple of considerations, if we decide to go forward with this:
One or two members would spearhead this.
Volunteer assistants could be asked to locate good info on various topics and submit it to be paraphrased (we cannot copy verbatim) and organized in preparation for putting into the forum.
One or more experienced bruggies would be asked to work with me in reviewing the info for content and accuracy, then it would be uploaded into the FAQ's Forum by the spearheading member.
Just as we have our wonderful Ruth Ann helping us with techy issues, we may need someone (logically a person who spearheaded the effort & uploaded the data) to maintain the FAQ's Forum, adding data as time goes by.
The topic is open to discussion!
Patrick
Brug Moderator
USDA Zone 8b
Heat Zone 3
Sunset Zone 5
SeaTac, WA...one cool place
Patrick I would volunteer to do what ever we decide on. I work well with HTML and web design. I would not want to write any of the FAQ for I don't really have the experience with that. But Input ,Design , Links and as I said before Hosting I would be willing and able to do. I could catagorize it. We could have a Table for the links or however we decide.
Wayne Thompson
North Tonawanda,NY
USDA zone 6a/6b
Heat zone 4
Sunset zone 39
Make that two.
Compiling info from old posts as I speak... um, type.
12 pages of posts, most of which I haven't read before, could take a little while. I didn't read THAT far back when I joined. LOL!
Must say though, it's interesting going through all the posts from the beginning in order, this forum has come a long way in a relatively short time.
Perhaps Wayne and I can work together on the html, get a nice layout going and all? Patrick, I'll send you my doc when I get a rough 1st draft type thing together, you can gather together the Brugie experts to review and make whatever necessary changes, corrections, additions, etc.
Now what exactly are Network54's parameters, other than obviously, can't copy straight from other sites?
Lynne
USDA Zone 9b
Heat Zone 10
Bradenton, Florida
I just wanted to point out that we have a nice Search feature that I haven't noticed anyone mention. It might help when trying to organize and read the posts. I just clicked Search and typed in pests and all the posts that mention pests came up. The rest of you may already know this but thought I'd add just in case you didn't.
Michele
Jacksonville, Fl
Zone 9a
Nature, in order to be commanded must be obeyed. Sir Francis Bacon
This message has been edited by michelejaxfl on Aug 29, 2006 12:22 AM
Michele, you are so right and it's right under our nose...at the top of the message list site. That is quite helpful and so easy to access. for pointing it out.
We need to come up with some system in our forum to save and make easily available information like Patrick and many of you have done throughout the threads. It's almost impossible 6 months down the road to remember where all of this valuable information lands within threads. I've copied much of the "pertinent" stuff and filed it in my files but it would be great to have much of the helpful advice where newbies to the forum can find it readily...or the rest of us be able to refer back to it when we need it. 
Michele, you are so right and it's right under our nose...at the top of the message list site. That is quite helpful and so easy to access. 
for pointing it out.