Australian and New Zealand Gardening: bromeliads for novices and addicts, sep, 2012, 3 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone,

Well it’s now early Sunday morning the first day of the show is over, and what a busy day it was; I feel like I’ve done a week’s work even though I was just sitting behind my little display answering questions, and judging by the amount of interest shown, I have no doubt that we’ll have a good supply of future hybridists.

There’s just today to go which is usually much busier than the Saturday as it is the main day of the “Spring Festival” and then we pull it all down again until next year. I know it seems like a lot of work for just two days of showing, but the interesting people you meet and the children you get the opportunity to encourage are all well worth the effort.

Jean – It seems I’ve heard your story so often from so many different people, and it’s not unusual for people come into brom’s from another hobby, be it other plants or breeding birds or fish to collecting rocks and fossils, but when people ask me why I do it, it just tell them, “it keeps me off the street and out of the pub”.

Ian – I’m very interested when you say you plant your Vriesea pups in scoria to promote roots, is this because your climate dictates what you should grow your plants in or is it just something you use to promote roots and then once established grow them in a different mix?

I don’t know why your cross with Neo. Tristus x Fosperior would have produced albino pups, however you can be sure that one of the parents is the culprit and from what I understand it’s usually the seed parent. This is where good record keeping and experimentation comes in handy; for instance from past records we know that if you use a plant which is albo-marginated as the “seed parent”, it will almost always produce albino seedlings. If on the other hand you used the albo-marginated plant as the “pollen parent”, the seedlings are usually OK.

What I would now do is to cross each of the parents you used with a known good breeder e.g. concentrica, but use them as the seed parent. If you don’t get any albinos you will know they weren’t at fault as a single parent but it was probably a “one off” combination of the two.

The only plant I have of the ones you’ve posted is Neo. ‘Indigo Mood’ and I must say it grows into a beautiful plant, but just let me say I wish I could shop at the place you buy your brom’s as a price of $2 is unheard of down here, and I certainly paid a lot more for my pup of the same plant.

Shirley – I’m very interested in what you say about, ”Nev, maybe you need to ‘refresh’ what you are working on to bring it up to date”. Being a complete “computer illiterate”, I have no idea what you are talking about so could you please explain in “language for dummies”?

It seems it doesn’t matter what angle you photograph your shade house from, it still looks just as neat and tidy and something to be very proud of.

Sue – You are right about the DG issue again. It’s happened twice now but my previous post was OK so I’m hoping it’s just some little gremlin playing games and he’s gone home now, or perhaps it’s something I’m not doing as Shirley suggested as a possibility, who knows?

I started to take a lot of pic’s as you suggested yesterday and when I got to pic 5 a message came up saying “out of memory”….bugger. As I’ve said on many occasions I’m not very well versed in the technical department and I couldn’t find a five year old kid around to show me what I had to do. I knew I had a lot of pic’s on my camera as I’ve never deleted any since I got it a few years back, so in between talking to people I started deleting pic’s (one by one) to make a bit of room. It’s a very monotonous job doing it one at a time and I’m sure there must be a way where I can delete say about fifty at a time but I’ve yet to work out how. There is a manual for the camera (at home somewhere) which also is in “technical talk” much of which I don’t understand either, so I’ll just have to “bumble” along and try and make a bit of space for pic’s before you lot “drum me out of the service”.

Good luck with your exercise routine and I’m sure your dogs will love it. Before my chronic back trouble intervened, I walked 4km every morning and I think it’s probably the thing I miss the most. Early morning is the best part of the day, nice fresh air and always something new to see as you witness the sunrise and the start of a new day and it really surprised me at the number of people who are out and about enjoying it as well. I could never understand how people could go to a gym and pay good money to walk 4km on an exercise machine while looking at a blank wall when they could have been out in the fresh air enjoying nature and seeing something different all the time for free!

Karen – I like your Groucho, a most unusual colour combination. I saw a Vriesea at the show yesterday with a similar colour combination but unfortunately I can’t remember the name but I’m almost certain I took a pic and all I have to do is unload them all and sort them out. That NOID you posted has the most beautiful subtle pink flush which really appeals to me and I’m sure a lot of others, but I can’t help you with a name.

Well here it is Monday and the show is all over for another year and another day has to be spent putting all of the plants away and generally tidying the place up as it looks like a bomb hit it at present. As for the show; well it went off very well with a good response from the public although numbers I think were down a bit on last year as Sunday was such a beautiful day and I expect a lot of people were happy to spend their time outside in the sun rather than come into a hall to see a brom show. In the end all of the exhibits came up OK although when looked at very closely I could see minor wind damage on almost every plant, but the growers (as I expected) had done a good job cleaning up their plants and I’m sure the public didn’t look at the plants as critically as I did. I even got a couple of minor placings which as I said previously, I didn’t expect as my plants weren’t up to show standard, however one has to accept the judge’s decision as final so I guess I have to live with it.

Wendy – I couldn’t agree more with you about bloody computers; I finished reading and responding to Karen’s post yesterday and had to get away to the show so I intended to add five pic’s of Tillandsias for all of you that like these “littlies” and they just wouldn’t load for me. Fortunately all of the text I had typed was on MS Word like (I usually do) so I just saved it and shut the computer down with the idea of finishing it all today when hopefully I’ll be able to load them. I suspect they were all too big so I’ll have to reduce them all first. Does anyone know of a quick way to do this? Please tell me in “Simple Steps for Idiots” if you do.

As you know I’m always interested in looking at pic’s of new seedlings and yours are no exception. I especially like your ‘Painted Delight’ seedling and I think when it eventually throws pups if you grow them really hard with NO fertilizer, you will be rewarded with fantastic colour. The same applies to your ‘Takemura’ x ‘Grace Darling’ seedling; and although the form isn’t as “filled in” as the ‘Painted Delight’ seedling, the colour is certainly there and will also benefit from the hard growing as suggested.

Ian – Your Predatress looks very different to mine (I’ll post a pic tomorrow for comparison), but I suspect yours may have been grown in more light. I like the colour of you Ques. Dark Form although I’ve had to get rid of all my Quesnelias as they were drawing too much blood with their vicious spikes. I was disappointed to lose them as I did always marvel at the “crepe paper” like flowers and the attractive eye catching colour. I’m not familiar with Ques. Mamorata but judging by the way it’s growing away from the pot, I think it would be an ideal subject for mounting on trees, just like Ques. Liboniana.

I don’t know if you are aware of it or not, but there are at least four different forms of Neo pauciflora, there’s the spotted common green form as well as the deeper coloured ‘purpurea’ form you posted and both colours come in small and larger forms (minor and major).

Trish – Glad to hear you got the big shade cloth job completed; it’s always good when you get the hardest bit out of the way isn’t it? How about some pic’s of the “finished product”.

They’re great pic’s you have posted; I especially like plants one and three. I’m especially interested in the first one, it’s a beautiful plant and I’m familiar with one of the parents, (Neo meyendorffii) but don’t know the second one and can’t find the name anywhere on the cultivar register so apparently it isn’t registered. Do you know any more about it, is there also a possibility the name is misspelled e.g. could it have been Coriacea or even Concentrica? What can I say about the beautiful Neo. Paula except it is just another of many from that great “Master Hybridist”, Chester Skotak, a real eye catcher!

Sue – I personally don’t see what all the interest is in the ‘Hannibal Lector’ types. True I grow them as they are very popular, but personally I think they are just “prickly rubbish” and nothing special (there I’ve now just upset a lot of people). I think where they come into their own is in breeding, and Chester Skotak in particular has proved this by producing some magnificent colours using it as a parent. So even though I “rubbished” it as a plant because I personally don’t like it, it is a magnificent parent which produces wonderful “kids” and you can check them all out on: http://registry.bsi.org/index.php?fields=&id=3291&search=han... .

Sue you have proved once again what I said about there being some spectacular species in the brom world with your picture of a variegated Guz. Wittmackii, there are some truly amazing forms of this particular plant and well worth collecting if you have the conditions to grow them. Anyway that’s about it for now and good luck with the Garden Competition, you deserve to do well with all of the hard work you have put in.

Finally a few pic’s from the show unfortunately no names as I just didn’t have time to get them all…sorry.

All the best, Nev.