Australian and New Zealand Gardening: bromeliads for novices and addicts, sep, 2012, 2 by perke_patch

perke_patch wrote:
Hi everyone.
Sue I love your swinging bench seat. What a wonderful place to sit and swing and contemplate how the garden is growing. that's new since we were down there. good luck for judging tomorrow. I'm sure your garden looks great. couldn't you borrow some big plants from Belinda just to fill a few spaces temporarily? if we were closer you could have your pic of some of ours and couldn probably even keep most of them. LOL

Shirley that innocentii is a great plant. very good striations there.

Ian I am very much like you and as I walk around I am always on the lookout for seed to try. My 4yo grandaughter is just as bad and after she leaves we often find a sieve full of seed pods she is drying out. Luckily she usually pics the pods from the ae tillandsiodes. she has a few yoghurt containers of seed growing now. I've found that these can grow like weeds but also can just shrivel and die. I've decided it is air circulation that is the difference. The first lot I had growing so well got attacked by a snail. bit every little green shoot right off at the ground. went from a tray of green to a tray of dirt in one night. I've started taking the lid of the trays each morning and replacing them each evening and the seedlings seem to be doing well. oh and we've covered the legs of the shelving with vaseline to stop grubs climbing up to the seedlings this time. nothing is touching walls or anything for grubs to come across. everything is free standing and greased.

Nev so glad your weekend went well. does your camera have a removable storage disk? if so you could carry several of the storage disks. then you wouldn't run out of storage space. LOL

Pic 1 is ae recurvata sharp form showing brilliant flush of red and an infloresence coming on.
Pic 2 is an infloresence on ae Bert showing all the ripe seed pods. this is in that garden full of ae all loaded with seed.
Pic 3 is one of our ae beeriana seedlings with a blue ruler behind howing size. these are really taking off and growing so quickly.
Pic 4 is a tub of seed sown 23 days ago. it is bill charlie webb x ? possibly amoena rubra (iceblock stick label faded between pollination and collection - won't do that again)
Pic 5 is portea NOID orange infloresence sown Marc this year and no potted up. these are also taking off in their new seedling area.

I'll post some more tomorrow night. off to bed now as babysitting again tomorrow and have a couple of groups coming through yard also. so I need my sleep now.

Night all
Wendy