Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads For May 2014, 2 by springer99

springer99 wrote:
Hi Everyone, hi Trish, lol, I'm here :) LOL
Wow you have heaps of pups to cut off, gee whiz. I like to keep up to mine as that many to do at once would be far too hard for me to find places for them. Most of my extras I sell now, as we just don't have the space to keep them. We are always getting new ones so they need space, so it leave nearly no space for pups.
Actually we don't buy too many anymore, but when we go, gee they are expensive. That's the bad thing with these broms, your taste goes up as you go along. Well mine does anyway. A lot of things we wait until the prices drops, but some I just have to have mainly for hybridizing reasons and they cost me a packet. I love variegates that's my weakness. But we are working towards making our own, we have a nice stock of broms to use now, just have to wait for them to flower and hope they come in at the same time.
Good work with the tunnel house, we have got at doing them now. But the extra two we did are not to the quality of the first one. The first one is braced with uprights so that we could hang a fair bit of weight, but the smaller two aren't. They are more just to cover the broms from the sun. We would of just pulled cloth out with 4 posts, but.... the side of the yard they are on, cops all the afternoon sun, so we would of needed a vertical drape on that side anyway, so doing a couple more tunnels just made sense. They are weaker design but still work well. They all stood up very well to the cyclone. Amazing how they handled it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask :)
Our little canistrum triangular, we have had it a year and I noticed it is just starting to push a tiny pup, node swelling and definitely happening, but no leaves etc yet. The reason for the colour and markings, is how 'hard' we have grown it. I often find that if things are starved of water and nutrients, they have amazing colour. No so good for pup production though, usually makes them super slow and don't give anywhere near the number of pups compared to a nicely fed and watered one. We didn't intentionally not pot it, just left it there and it's been happy, so left it be. I should nail it to a tree!
I didn't think of Envy for deflasking, great idea. Mind you I didn't have Envy when I got my little tissue culture tills.... that all died on me. My fault, just neglected. The days before our irrigation set up. Lost a lot of seedlings back then too. Which reminds me I noticed the seedling in the new brom house were rather dry yesterday after the irrigation went off, must add a couple more sprinklers near them. Might go do that now before it comes on.
I absolutely love your broms and the great colours you have. Isn't funny how we always think everyone elses look far better than our own, lol.
Ok what photo can I add?
Ok Neo Harvey's Jewel and Neo Darkest Hour.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and Happy Mother's Day to all the mum's.
Cheers Tash