Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS IN SUMMER ..2014, 2 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone - Well I'm finally back to re-potting and had a lovely day yesterday as I started into the long journey trying to catch up with the back-log of re-potting.

I have to go to physio today for some new exercises to do over the Christmas break. On my last visit they told me that once the pins are out it's important to get onto these exercises which basically is just squeezing some exercise putty while holding your hand under water. There may be more to it than that, but that's what I was told last time so I'll just have to wait until 1.00am to find out.

I was even able to get my old wok out last night and cook tea (around here we oldies still say tea instead of dinner) I wasn't able to use the wok until now as I needed my left hand to hold it with whilst tossing the food in it. We had Sweet and Sour Chicken last night, (the proper Chinese style) not that sweet sickly muck you buy in a jar at the supermarket.

Teresa - It seems like you and me the only ones out of bed this morning. I thought you'd like that picture of Neo.'Black Forest' with its dark colour and subtle spotting.

Also the Neo.'Satsuma' which although it doesn't have nice wide leaves, it does have brilliant colour which the camera can't accurately seem to reproduce. In fact, in certain light it seems to "glow", and like all of these medium/small plants with narrow leaves and stolon born pups, it looks a picture when grown in a basket.

Today I'm going to post pictures of some nice Allan Freeman Neo. hybrids just for a change. I don't know if you know this or not, but Allan Freeman was a prolific Queensland hybridiser who turned out many beautiful Neo hybrids with 957 registered on the BCR.

I've always been a fan of Allan Freeman hybrids, and they mainly appeal to me because of their nice wide leaves and variations of often multiple colours; unfortunately there's not many of them find their way to our area and I just have to be content with the occasional one I'm able to swap with growers from the north.

A friend of mine was also a big fan of these Allan Freeman hybrids and before he died he would often send me pic's . Below are some of those pic's, and although they aren't my plants, I very much wish they were.

Although Dave's Garden shows them as copyrighted to me, I never took them and they were probably taken by Keith Golinski who took so many pictures of Allan's hybrids to use when he registered them on Allan's behalf.

Pic.1 is Neo.'Gotcha', Pic.2 is Neo.'Kybosh', Pic.3 is Neo.'Ladybird', Pic.4 is Neo.'Labyrinth' and Pic. 5 is Neo.'Maestro'.

All the best, Nev.

This message was edited Dec 23, 2014 1:31 PM