Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES AND ADDICTS - JULY 2014, 5 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
I won't say good morning everyone as it's a nasty, horrible, windy, icy cold day, here today in beautiful Illawarra. I can't see myself doing anything out in the yard today and all I can say is thank heavens I built those shutters on the south facing wall of my shade shelter otherwise the plants would have all been blown off their suspension points. The wind is obviously coming up from the snow fields as it's just so icy. I didn't go outside to check the temperature as it's too bloody cold; in fact I almost got blown down the street when I went out to get the paper. I did see an interesting site though, a young lady jogging in just shorts and T shirt, I mean hasn't she got any feeling or maybe she just doesn't have a brain. I think I also saw a monkey walking up the street looking for someone who knew how to well “brass balls”????

We've had our visiting dogs sleeping in the laundry since they've been here and each morning when I open the back door they run out into the yard to “mark their territory” and investigate what's been around during he night. Not this morning though; they both followed me to the back door and when I opened it they turned around and were back into bed in a flash.

Teresa – Nice to hear from you and that you like the two pic's I posted. Now that I know you like spotty brom's, I'll have to post a few pic's for you. I like them also, but there are a lot of growers who don't even keep them any more as they are a bit like clothing and seem to go in and out of fashion down here and at present they aren't the flavour of the month.

Trish – As I read through all the things you did as a kid, it's uncanny just how alike we were in what we did. My introduction to growing seeds was when I was a young child. This interest started when I was about ten years old and I was given a packet of Dahlia seeds by Dad to try and grow in my own little garden in our back yard. I opened the packet of seeds, and in my hurry to plant them I tripped over and spilled the lot! Seeds went everywhere, and thinking I had ruined my chances of growing any plants at all, I raked the soil over once again in preparation for trying again later when I had saved enough pocket money to replace the packet of spilled seed.

I had forgotten all about them until one day when Dad said, “Your dahlia seeds are all up,” and when I went to look, sure enough there they were, all standing up like little soldiers, although not in nice neat lines as I had initially intended but all over the place. I watered and weeded those seedlings until they grew into adulthood and eventually flowered. What amazed me most was that all the flowers were of different sizes, shapes and colours, and I believe that is where my interest in growing flower plants from seed really started. Like you, I also expanded into growing vegetables and of course (in my case) much later life, Bromeliad seed and I've never lost the thrill of seeing the first of those seeds germinate and imagining what may be produced from them as they grow into mature plants.

As for the Neo. 'Rosella', I contacted the lady I got it from originally, but unfortunately she has got out of brom's in favour of other interests and doesn't have it any more. Thanks for your offer to keep an eye out for it when you visit the tablelands as I don't think it's so uncommon, it's just that there appears to be different clones. The ones I got as replacements are all of similar colour but none have that nice rounded compact form of the original.

Just as a brief footnote about Vr, 'Splendriet', down here it does have one failing and that is I find it intolerant of colder temperatures, and during winter it needs to be put under cover to avoid cold damage.

Neo.'Enchantment' is one of my favourite plants, yet for a plant that has been around for so long down here as well as in Queensland, I'm very much surprised that no one has registered it yet as it isn't shown on the BCR (Unless of course it's registered under a different name).

The plant in your pic. is actually the preferred albo-marginated (meaning white margins on the leaves) form of Neo. Enchantment which usually has green leaf margins. (See Pic.1)

The name is usually written as Neo. 'Enchantment' albo-marginata/marginated and I think part of the albo-marginata name has possibly been erased at some time and re-written as just “alba” which is incorrect as that means the plant should be white. This sort of thing happens a lot more often than we realise, where part of a name is erased or bleached by the sun so that it's illegible and it's often the case where the grower just takes a guess (usually an incorrect one) and re-writes what they think it should be.

Shirley – You surprise me when you say how cold and windy it is where you live, it sounds just like here this morning. I've always imagined Queensland as a warm, sunny place just like it's promoted on the tourism adverts. Possibly windy at times but never as cold as you describe it.

Our internet allocation was also used up and we were on very, very, slow speed for a few days. We didn't know what had caused it until I realised that our eldest grandson wasn't just playing games on his “Gismo” (or what ever you call it) but was constantly watching “You Tube” and using up my internet allocation. (Bloody kids and technology).

It seems like every time we plan something like you're doing with your shade cloth floor it comes up windy. I can remember when I worked with the builder, every time we were roofing and had to put the foil insulation beneath the roofing, as soon as we rolled it out, up came the wind; it never missed!

Anyway, think of how much better it will be with the weed mat down and not having to constantly weed between plants.

It's certainly a good looking construction, but I have to ask, are you sure you can fit all of those brom's in there? Although from my own experience it's amazing just what you can pack into a shade house.

They're certainly a nice looking lot of plants and I hope you can get everything done and get them under cover quickly without any damage from falling twigs, and don't forget to post lots of pic's of the finished product.

I'll finish today with Pic.1 Neo.'Enchantment', and the rest are spotted types for Teresa with Pic.2 being my favourite Neo.'Gold Fever', then Pic.3 Neo.'Golden Fantasy', Pic.4 Neo. 'Wine and Gold' and Pic.5 Neo. 'Midnight Moment'

All the best, Nev.