Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads for novices & addicts, October 2012, 4 by perke_patch

perke_patch wrote:
had to share these 2 pics of this massive guzmania in Ross's garden. the pic of the plant has my foot in the pic to show just how large the plant is. he didn't have any pups though so I'll have to go back until I get one. it is gus testudinensis splendida x albo rosea.

just to finish off the group the next 3 are of Ross's flowering epi / cactus plants flowering. he had colour everywhere in these baskets but these were the best colours.

Anyway time for bed now. we've had a very big day potting all our bare pups we brought home. I think I potted up 8 trays today ... 20 aechmea chianti most of them in flower .... brilliant colours similar to ae rajah (or electra it used to be called), 20 imperialis rubra that came out of 1 inch tubes but good sized, another 12 small seedlings alc whyanbeel x glazouiana and the pups we took off the large extensas we brought home. tomorrow I have 3 bags of mini neos to pot up and a bag of vrisea pups. Oh and today I also potted up 10 Alan Ladd hybrids of a variegated mini called fallen. anyway I put all of them into a hanging basket to multiply for us. they look like they might be a smaller version of rosy fireball.

Shirley I will post your seeds I promise and Nev I will get you a pup of canefire and whatever the other one you said you wanted and will post you a parcel including a packet of stamps as you seem to spend more on postage of seeds than I do. I haven't had much success in crossing neos as I haven't worked out how to identify the ones crossed. will have t come up with a way of IDing them so I am grateful for any neo crosses you send me. Oh and it was good that you posted a pic of your neo carcharadon x concentrica as I had a tray of nice sized ones potted up and growing nicely till I found them yesterday all bitten off at the soil. I looked everywhere for a snail or something and only thing I found was a few of those little bugs that get in the seed trays so wondered if they also bite off the roots of potted up seedlings. I binned the 4 or 5 that were still attached to soil along with the potting mix. I think it may have been 1 block of seed raising mix that was infested with those little bugs. I will admit I have been slack and not zapping the trays in the microwave as I'm not sure how the perlite will go... will it explode if I zap it? my seed mix has perlite mixed in alreay in a bucket with a screw on lid. hopefully that will keep out any bugs.

anyway off to bed now. night all. hope you enjoyed the picks from Wardell. hi to everyone I didn't mention tonight.

Wendy