Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES & ADDICTS MARCH 2012, 0 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone, looks like another nice fine, sunny morning so I think I’ll just poke around the plantation for a while and see what’s new since my last visit.

Colleen – When you have brom’s it always seems to be a case of finding room for something doesn’t it? I’ll walk around my place and see a Neo or two with nice big pups that need taking off; the trouble is, when you do this and have them all nicely potted up you’re then faced with the dilemma of where you can put them.

Karen – Those Neo’s you see the pic’ of from Thailand are certainly beautiful with their multiple layers of leaves and the same can be said of Neo’s from Hawaii as well. I'm told it has to do with the climatic conditions and they just keep on adding leaves and more leaves and so it goes. The down side to this is, that it takes them longer to flower and to produce pups, so you see for every plus there is a minus. I often wonder how much better a lot of our seedlings would look if they were grown in those countries and under similar conditions.

It will be interesting to see just what the little Neo you found turns out like. I remember back when I was just starting out with brom’s a lady a couple of doors away was cleaning up her garden in preparation to sell her house and in a wheel barrow I spotted a couple of green leaved Neo’s. She said they were being tossed as they “did nothing” and “were only ever green”. I asked if I could have them to which she agreed and after a couple of years in a well lit position, they produced a few pups which turned out to be quite attractive, compact, and well shaped plants with nice dark purple centres, so I guess there’s a lot of truth in the saying of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. Obviously she had them stuck away in a dark corner of the garden and it only took a bit of good light to bring out the best in them.

Wendy – It’s interesting to hear what you say about your son’s Neo Silverado planted in the ground. I have also found that Neo’s planted in the garden will be almost double the size of the same plants grown in pots. I think this is largely due to the fact that when in the ground they have the choice of sending their roots anywhere until they find just what they like. On the other hand, plants in a pot just have to be content with what we provide for them which isn’t always to their liking.

I have gone the opposite way to you when potting up pups and I now pot them in a smaller size pot than I did previously as I have found down here in my area, they put down roots about six months quicker than they did previously in the larger size pots, so I guess it’s all about growing conditions and what suits one grower doesn’t necessarily suit another.

I like your pic’s of ‘Fury’ and it really highlights the important part that light plays with the leaf colour of Neo’s and is a great example when trying to make this point to new growers.

I’ll finish with a few more of Chanin’s pic’s (unfortunately no names available) and I'll start of with a very large Aechmea which Chanin is positioning on the show table, the other four plants are of Tillandsias in the same show; I mean, I have to give the “Tilly” growers among you something to drool over as well, don’t I?

All the best, Nev.