Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS GOING INTO WINTER 2015, 2 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – We had a great brom meeting yesterday with a large roll up and some good topics for entertainment. We initially had a very informative Power Point Presentation from a member on how he grows his Tillandsias which included the different types, where they are grown, how they are mounted, how they are fertilised and how often the3y are watered. It was a great presentation from which I’m sure the member learned a lot.

Next we had a short slide show of pictures showing all of the prize winners at the recent Bromeliad Conference held in Sydney.

Finally there was a question and answer session about preparing plants for winter and the most important information to come out of that discussion was, if you are just now preparing your plants for winter well then you’ve left it too late as winter is already upon us.

The general consensus was that plant preparation is a year round thing and that if you maintain your plants well, you need do nothing more than perhaps give them a few drinks of Seasol or similar seaweed product to help build up their resistance to the cold. To sum up it was said that it basically came under two categories, plant hygiene and accommodation.

Hygiene: keeping your plants clean all the year around and paying particular attention to the removal old dead and broken leaves, especially the remnants of these around the base of the plant as this is where Scale and Mealy Bug breed, and fungus disease often starts which leads to rot.

Accommodation: Housing your plants in a location where they can take full advantage of available light and are protected from wind. Most importantly, making sure there is plenty of air circulation around each plant and they aren’t over-crowded.

Teresa – Congratulations on your 10th anniversary, we had our 52nd this year so we’re still a bit ahead of you Ha! Ha!

Don’t feel too bad about not getting him a present as it’s more about the love and respect you give each other than the presents you give. However, more importantly, what did Sugar think of the portrait?

It’s interesting with that Thunderbird x Painted Lady seedling how some of the painted lady markings are showing through and this supports Jack Koning’s theory that the pollen parent dictates the colour of the offspring in most cases.

I’m sorry but I don’t know where the owner of that wonderful garden lives in N.Z. I just know it’s a wonderful garden.

Brian – It’s good that family always know they can come back home when circumstances require it. Even though your kids grow up and leave home to make their own life somewhere else they always seem to leave a little bit of themselves behind as a link so they can come back if required.

I know even though our three have all left home and have their own homes and families, the wardrobes in their old rooms are still full of their stuff. It took me three years to re-claim my Vrieseas shade house from my eldest son who had his bonsai growing in it, but finally he decided to build his own and give mine back to me.
You are building a collection of nice looking plants and that Ae ‘Rakete’ is a very interesting plant and one that’s even good to look at when not in flower. Its rich burgundy under-leaf colour and lighter upper leaf colour with dark markings really makes it different to the usual Aechmea and certainly worth having in a collection

Neo ‘Pheasant’ is a great looking little mini and when it’s mature and coloured up fully, you’ll be patting yourself on the back because you bought it.

Your variegated plant looks nice also and these types usually winners in everyone’s eyes. It could be one of several which look very similar and I’m not going to say which one I think it is in case I get it wrong and make a fool of myself.

You plant in picture four looks like one of the many different coloured Vr ospinae var. gruberi clones.

That’s about it from me today and just for Brian, I’ll finish first with a couple of pic’s of mini Neo. Pheasant’ and three different clones of Vr. ospinae var gruberi. Unfortunately, the pictures and plants of Vr. ospinae var gruberi are not mine and belong to a friend.

All the best, Nev