Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES & ADDICTS MARCH 2012, 4 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Good morning everyone,

We were lucky with another fine day again yesterday and I managed to get a lot of re-potting done, although it’s still just the “tip of the iceberg” and I have heaps more to do. When collections grow it seems to be an ever continuing job, and if you start dabbling with growing from seed as I have, there’s even more potting to do. Don’t get me wrong, I love re-potting and find it very relaxing work but the problem comes when I have to find somewhere to put the re-potted plants afterwards.

Karen – As for your Hallelujah, I can only tell you what I would do if it was my plant; the final decision is up to you. As I see it from what you’ve told us and what I see in the picture, your plant is now too big for the pot it's in and needs to be relocated. It’s a nice well grown plant and very healthy looking, but I think it lacks a bit of colour. Before I give you any advice I first have a couple of questions for you; firstly, have you been feeding it, and if so what with; secondly, is it growing in a well lit area?

In my opinion, you’re quite correct; it does need re-potting as it has outgrown the pot it’s in. Now depending on what you want, there are two ways you can go about this; you can “re-pot” or simply “pot-on”. For any newbies here who don’t know the difference:

Re-potting; is to remove the plant from the pot it’s in, remove as much of the old mix as possible along with trimming off any obvious dead leaves and roots. Select a pot that will accommodate it for about two years taking into account there will be future pups that need to be allowed for as well, and re-pot it using a well draining potting mix of your choice. The advantages in this are that the plant has new potting mix which will be good for at least another two years. The disadvantages are that the plant does have to be disturbed and will suffer a bit of stress from transplanting; this can be overcome by watering of Seasol.

Potting on; is a much quicker and simpler option where the plant it just removed from its present pot without disturbing the roots or the mix it’s growing in and placed into another pot of larger size and adding new potting mix around the sides of the root ball to fill the pot. The advantages in this are it’s quicker; there is no disturbance of the roots and consequently no transplant stress. The disadvantage is that you still have the major part of your plant growing in old mix which has probably lost all nutritional value at this stage. My preference is to always re-pot, that way you know exactly how much life is left in your mix and when the plant is due to be re-potted again.

As for your question on dividing the plant, again you have two choices, leave it as one big plant or separate it into several individual plants. The advantages of dividing are that you have more plants which will pup quicker now they are no longer attached to each other. The disadvantages are you lose the visual impact that you have with a nice large specimen plant.

Because you say that you want to maintain a large plant, there are two options here also. As you suggest, you can put all the separated plants in the one pot as a group so they still look like one plant in the same pot, or you can re-pot the total plant in its undivided condition. This will still produce pups but not as many as with single plants. To promote more pups on the one large plant, you can cut through the rhizome that attaches the plants to each other once the plant has been re-potted. This will give a similar effect to planting all the single plants together in the one pot, will produce more pups than it would if left intact, and is not as awkward to achieve when positioning several single plants in the one pot, plus the plant looks like it’s still the one plant and hasn’t been disturbed.

Shirley – I’ve had Clyde checked out at the vet’s for arthritis and the vet reckons he’s not troubled with it. He’s just a bit creaky in the bones due to old age, but not in any pain and subsequently not on any medication. He can still get up into his chair OK, eats like a horse and seems just a bit slower than he used to be.

About the Alcantarea pic’s, I should have made it clear, the Bobby Gold was from Ebay and owned by Peter Tristram (I think), and the others belong to Peter Coyle of New Zealand. Just for a change of pace, all of the Ae. Recurvatas in yesterday’s lot were my plants.

As for the rain, well the long range weather forecast for down here is for rain every day in March, so they’ve already got that wrong as we’ve just had two fine days and today is fine as well!

I’ll finish now with the last of Peter Coyle's pictures ....No.1 Neoregelia Yin, No.2 Neoregelia Yang, (both of these are from the crossing of Neo. carolinae x Neo. Carcharodon) No.3. Neoregelia Wild Tiger, No.4. Neoregelia Zonata x Carcharadon Tiger, No. 5 Neoregelia Lillie Marlene

All the best, Nev.