Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR MARCH ....2014, 3 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi to the two “T's” - Theresa and Trish, It's a good job you're both posting or there wouldn't be anything to read at all.

Had a bit of a sad day yesterday as I went to say goodbye to my old mate at his funeral which was originally intended to just be a small private family affair with his three closest friend invited. However it ended up being a normal open funeral which was just as well as the chapel was full to overflowing and people were standing outside and it was an indication of just how well he was liked by all who knew him. There was also a good roll up from the members of the Brom Society which his wife said she greatly appreciated.

When I got home from the funeral I saw that my son-in-law had dropped off a white plastic Venetian blind which had come into the recycle centre but which they don't sell. He had thought of me and the brom name tags I make out of the aluminium Venetian blind slats and thought these would be even better being plastic. I don't have the heart to tell him that the reason I use the aluminium slats is that the Bower Birds “steal” the normal plastic name tags and that's why I started making them in the first place as they are “Bower Bird Proof”. It's a shame really as the slats on this blind are exactly the right width which I usually have to cut with scissors, they are white and are easy to write on with the same type of fine OHP marker I use for the other ones I make but I still don't think they will be "Bower Bird Proof"..

Theresa – Well it seems like you have some good news as well as the bad news. Obviously the bad news is that you're being made redundant but the good news is that you still have some part time work at least.

It's not just the savings in wages the management makes but also when you are employed as part time instead of full time it cost them less to employ you because your other entitlements usually change as well. It's quite complicated here in Australia, and New Zealand may be different, but just double check to see what your entitlements are exactly.

I had it all explained to me once and forget the finer points, but as I understood it the hourly rate was a little higher, but your annual leave entitlements were different and I don't think there was any long service leave entitlements involved at all as the argument was that as a part time worker you wouldn't accrue any long service (even though I know of part time workers who have been employed in this capacity for many years).

Obviously it's all meant to save money for the “higher ups” in the business so double check and make sure you are getting paid what you're entitled to. I'm sure there's some Govt. department there that can tell you what your entitlements are under the current award and it's best to check this out and see where you stand. It's quite confusing now as there are “full time workers”, “part time workers”, “casual workers”, “casual part time workers”, “weekly staff”, “fortnightly staff”, “monthly staff”, professional salaried staff” and even more that I no longer remember and all on different rates of pay and conditions.

When discussing the availability of brom's in your area you said,”I was disappointed that a nursery should be doing the same thing”. The thing is that if it's just a general nursery as such, they wont be growing their own brom's; they will be buying them in just the same as Bunnings, K-Mart, Mitre-10 and the other large stores; in other words they are just “on sellers” and they all seem to use the same method with the generic naming of plants. The thing is that most of these plants are now well known so it shouldn't be too hard to get a positive ID either here or on some other forum.

The thing to remember is that there are still bargains to be had sometimes if you look at the plant closely. I remember buying an Alcantarea Imperialis Rubra from Bunnings once for $20 ($19.95); they had just been unloaded and I got first pick and got what I thought was a very nice big plant for the money. When I told an “out of town friend” he asked me to get one for him also and when I went back there were only two smallish ones left for the same price, but when I looked more closely I saw that one of these had four pups emerging so I got that one. My friend was more than satisfied as the pups grew very quickly and I think he got even more pups from that plant which was probably some by-product of the gassing treatment they had all been given to make them grow and flower quicker.

Trish – Like you I'm pleased to see that the current rain is being wide spread to some of the inland areas as well and not just confined to the coast as it usually is. I'm sure the farmers will be very grateful for it, but unfortunately they need much more and according the the weather report it will be finished in a few days time.

Thanks for your suggestion about my seedling re-potting dilemma, but it's not the re-potting that's the problem. I love the re-potting and apart from watering, it's my favourite part of brom growing and I could gladly sit and re-pot all day and think I'm “in heaven”. The problem comes when they've all been re-potted and there's nowhere for them to go; I need an area twice the size of what I have and heaps more under shade cloth to accommodate all of these babies.

Because they are overcrowded now, they are growing very lanky as they compete for more light and this completely buggers up their shape. What I think I'll have to do is look closely at each plant and very selectively pick out a few that I think could turn out OK and keep them and dump the rest. I've always said that culling is a very painful process and I kidded myself that I could get rid of enough to friends so I wouldn't have to do this, but unfortunately they've just grown too fast for me to keep up with and that plus the fact that my friends have mostly run out of space as well doesn't solve my problem.

If I didn't have grandsons who love running around on the grass and if I hadn't planned to get another dog in the near future, I could rip up all the grass and grow brom's in its place,but that's not going to happen, so culling it will have to be!

I wasn't cranky with myself so much about the feedback I gave about Neo.'Jinx', it was mainly that I went off “half cocked” and fell into the trap of opening my big mouth before I had checked it out thoroughly and looked at everything and not just the obvious; advice I'm always giving others and failed to follow myself.

Regarding the Ginger plant - You sent me a Dwarf Ginger and a Pink Ginger; the cold winter knocked over one of them and the one in the pic is what's left and is about 2'6” high which is good as I had my doubts that either would have grown.

You'll be very pleased with your Neo.'Sonic Boom' plants when they mature as they are from that “master hybridiser” of variegated plants, Chester Skotak.

The parentage is a bit complicated being [(carolinae variegated x cruenta) x Bobbie Hull] x Neo. 'Spines'. However the B.C.R. tells us the name of 'Spines' was registered by Dennis Cathcart in August 2008 resulting from a selection of seed raised from one of the many 'carcharodons’. In August 2011 Eloise Beach, of Florida, advised that the original plant had been given the name of ‘Spines’ by Chester Skotak, for a plant he got from Pedro Nahoum in Niteroi, Brazil in the 1990’s but was never officially recorded. What ever the history is, I'm sure they'll both mature into beautiful plants you'll be very proud of.

Finally, a big “Hi” to any of our friends reading but (unfortunately) not posting and a big “Get Well Soon” to anyone on the sick list.

Here's a few pic's to hopefully cheer you up a bit as I finish off today. Pic.1 is the Ae. Shelldancer I found a week or so back and posted previously when it was just emerging, Pic.2 is my Alcantarea 'Silver Plum' grown from a very small grass pup I was given a while back and as I'm not an “Alc” grower, I'm pretty “Chuffed” at this result. Pic.3 is (as I call it) “A thorn between two roses) and is an albino pup on one of my Aussie Dream plants, which once again just goes to show the instability of some from this grex. Pic.4 is another of my early seedlings from the crossing of Neo. concentrica x ('Charm' x 'Cracker Jack') and Pic.5 is still one of my all time favourites, the beautifully shaped Neo. 'Royal Cordovan'.

All the best, Nev.