Australian and New Zealand Gardening: bromeliads for novices and addicts, sep, 2012, 4 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – I guess we are all awaiting the results of Sue's garden in the garden competition with our collective fingers all crossed; good luck Sue.

I know it's not about brom's, but to follow on from the recent Rugby League post when the Qld. Cowboys were cheated out of a win by NSW Manly; anyone who didn't watch Manly play Melbourne last night, you missed a beaut game; Manly got well and truly flogged and one of Melbourne's early tries clearly wasn't a try but was awarded anyway, so I think that's a great “get even” for what happened against Nth Qld.

Sorry about that little outburst and now back to brom's. Colleen, what's the name of the plant in the second picture, it's a “beaut”.

Sue – I like your visitor, we have a couple who regularly visit the Light Railway Museum where I am a member. Our area is bush on two sides and this is where they hang out, but occasionally they will just wander into the machine shop, have a look around and then wander back out again, and they don't seem to be frightened about the fact that people are working in there at the time.

Karen – Although the size and the markings on Blushing tiger and Gympie Delight are very similar, as I see it the main difference lies in the cup colour. Neither of the first two pic's are my plants but I use them to show the difference. Even though Pic 1 is a still a pup and Pic 2 is an adult plant, you can still see the differences in the colour tone in the cup. (That's how I tell them apart anyway).

Ian – Most plant breeders are happy to discus their hybrids with other growers unless it's something "pretty special" and the other grower is a hybridist who is a business rival.

Regarding the fertiliser type on the plant you bought from a nursery; it would be pretty difficult to find out what was used as most of these plants are bought in from somewhere else before on-selling. Sometimes you can see the “prills” in the mix when you are re-potting the plants but not always. My advice would be to take a guess based on the fact that most professional growers and nurserymen/women now use “prill” type fertilisers which last for 3 or 6 months (although there are some which last 12 months). I would wait for 6 months before I feed again, this way you can almost be sure that the initial fertiliser has worn off (just my opinion).

Stopping birds from stealing name tags - I found this to be a big problem which first started when the Bower Birds would come into the yard and steal the blue clothes pegs from the clothes line. My wife decided to change the colour of the pegs and the stealing stopped.

Unfortunately they then decided that the next best thing was the plastic name tags from my brom's. The worst attack I had was when they stole every tag out of all of my Aechmea Orlandianas. As you all know, orlandianas all look the same when not coloured up and so I had to wait almost another year until they coloured up before I could sort out the name mess.

After trying different things, I finally found out that our Bower Birds only like plastic name tags, so now I cut my name tags from old aluminium Venetian blind slats and haven't had a problem since. A word of warning though, some fertilisers and manures will re-act with aluminium and corrode it, so place you tag in the pot where it won't come in contact with these fertilisers. As a “back up” system you could also write out a secondary plastic name tag and push it well down into the pot below the mix where the birds can't get it.

I really like the unorthodox container in your second pic, it really is "making a statement"!

Finally a few pic's to finish with, Pic 1 is Neo. 'Blushing Tiger' (pup), Pic 2 is Neo. 'Gympie Delight', Pic 3 is Neo. 'Blast', Pic 4 is a "scruffy" looking Neo. 'Birdrock' and Pic 5 an "oldie" but a "goodie" Neo. 'Gold Fever'.

All the best, Nev.