Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads - Autumn 2015, 3 by bromishy

bromishy wrote:
Hi Everyone!

Big week done and dusted thank goodness and next week and even bigger week as I am covering someone’s role while they are on annual leave.

Yesterday was lovely as woke up early and I watered all my broms just on day break then we went to the beach for a couple of hours and I read one of my brom books while Joe read the newspaper; then the rest of the day was spent in the garden weeding and cleaning up a brom garden bed that I had neglected for some time where I have broms growing under a bonsai looking bottle-brush shrub, it’s a lovely shrub that produces beautiful flower the birds really enjoy but it really does make my broms messy so I need to give them a good flush out every couple of month and sometimes use a paintbrush to get some of the tiny leaves out that just don’t won’t to budge sometimes.

Today we had friends over for breakfast and then a brom collector friend coming over with his wife to check out my brom collection; then the rest of the day will be spent doing little odd jobs around the place but nothing too hectic given we have the Easter long weekend coming up and can tackle some of larger jobs then. We sent our Brom friend home with a few extra Broms and Orchids as gifts and they were thrilled to bits and excited about going home to find spots for all of them.

Hi Teresa thanks heaps for starting this new thread and Jean you too for also starting one at the same time LOL; like Teresa said “Great Minds Think Alike”; very much appreciated as the other thread was getting too long to scroll to the bottom each time.

Both you’re Bill. and Fushsia are looking lovely, seems like a perfect spot for them.

What’s Sugar been up to, does she enjoy been in the garden with her mummy like my girls do. I just opened the beautiful picture of Sugar on the beach having the time of her life by the looks of things, doe she like going for a swim?

Hi Brian no worries, it’s so easy to miss posts when pressing the send button and normally I am in such a rush I don’t have time to go back in and check if I missed any posts.

Nice broms you brought at Nev’s Brom Society, great choices that you made and sure you have found a wonderful spot for them in your garden.

Hi Jean hope you are freeing up some room with getting rid of some of your bigger broms, sure it would be a hard decision to make but good that the one’s you will get will be much easier for you to handle and move around. I recently cut pups off a few of my big broms and felt tired by the fifth one like I should have trained for the task; mind you it was in the middle of summer and the humidity was a killer.LOL. Lovely Vriesea pics you posted on 18/3; I especially like Pic 1 of Ae. ‘La Tigra’ with it’s stunning flower.

I noticed during the week that my Vriesea ‘Splendrite’ is flowering for the first time so I am thrilled to bits about that as I know they can be temperamental to grow but lucky for me we get warm weather and good humidity which is exactly what they luv the most to grow well.

Hi Nev thanks we did not receive any wind damage from Cyclone ‘Nathan’ or any rain at all for that matter as with the direction it was going it pretty much sucked everything up and away from us; this year so far has been so dry and the wetlands behind us are totally bone dry compared to last year.

Great to hear your Workshop went well with such a great turnout than what was expected; the “Do it Yourself Workshop” sounded very interesting and I liked hearing how one of the members grows their Cryptanthus and look forward trying to grow some of mine this way as mine have never really done that well not that I have many in my collection. I found a few neglected ones under the Bottle-brush today and need to do some work on them or I could possibly loose them as they currently look very sad.

Thanks for putting my name down for Bill. ‘Stephen Stone’, very much appreciated whenever you can. I too have many people’s names down for certain broms and I still have not got a pup off some of them for myself so wait time can be very long considering I like to keep more than one pup with some in my collection.

Pleased to hear you liked the Sedge Frog, there is so very many of them in our garden and when they breed and hatch the lawn is alive with them like you would not believe and the best way to see them is when the mower is going and we see them jumping to get out of the way; it happens once a year I think around late Nov into Dec and we mow ever so slow to give them time to hop away. It’s great that you have frogs in your yard and like you I find them very interesting and am pleased they have taken up residence in our garden and adopt a brom and in turn provide all my broms with great free fertiliser from all their droppings.

Luved the pics of your Spotted Honey Eater, they look like regular nesters around you garden like the little Sunbirds we get here that are always building nests everywhere.

Congratulations, great sales you made at the Brom Society and hope it freed up some extra bench space around your garden; every little bit helps doesn’t it and now I can imagine you will be busy removing/potting up pups and filling all the gaps if you haven’t done so already.

Nev I sent Shirley an email a while back to check all is well and got an email back saying all was fine but that they were flat out busy; it was lovely hearing from her as I too miss seeing Shirley on this forum as well as Colleen but can totally appreciate how hard it is to make time sometimes with the busy lives we all lead. Remember I used to be on here all the time but of late not as often as I would like and I am disappointed about that because I really enjoy chatting with you all as everyone is so lovely and caring and just a shame we all live so far apart otherwise I would be on your door steps popping in for a cuppa every now and then for sure. I don’t do FB or am I part of any other forums, this forum is pretty much all I have time to participate in and even then not as much as I would like but when I can I like nothing more than to log on and chat with all my Brom Buddies here and share in each other’s lives and be there for one another; that’s why my threads are so long because I always have so much to catch-up on LOL.

Nev those Meyendorffii pics are absolutely stunning, gotta luv the “leaf stacking’, not something easily achieved and I wonder what your friend’s secret is in growing them so beautifully? Would you think it would need more regular feeding than other types so it grows quicker to achieve the “leaf stacking”?

Nev I will check out the name of the Vriesea picture I posted a while back with no name as I think it’s different to the one you thought it might be but will check and advise.

I still have a lot of posts to read that I have missed but for today I will have to stop as I need to take my friends to the airport shortly and want to upload pics and then get ready to go.

I look forward to hopefully catching-up with you all during the week my beautiful friends.

Take Care & Happy Gardening!

Trish