Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES & ADDICTS APRIL 2012, 1 by perke_patch

perke_patch wrote:
Hi all. Missed you all for a couple days. Last night I was so sore and tired after a big day doing the makeover of an area of the yard that I just couldn't think straight. dreaded having a shower because the arms were stinging without water touching them. I knew when I finally worked up the courage to step under the shower I was in for a lot of pain and I was right. Today was just as bad with more potting of the ones we pulled out of the overgrown area. All this started with Johnny deciding to trim the tips of one tree that looked like they were dying. The tree ended up being well pruned and he started on the next one too. He would have chopped even more but I cautioned him about opening up too much sun on the broms. We watched the movement of the sun all afternoon yesterday and again today. I hope we put sun tollerant broms on the tops of the totems because they are now getting a good dose of lunchtime sun. It is shortlived though as there is only a narrow gap between the trees on the east and the shadecloth on the west. Ah well they will adapt and love the winter sun. Pic is of the area we trashed and redid. I think it looks pretty good now. It was getting very thick with multiple pups in most pots and some looking way past their prime.

Nev I didn't know there were so many different genera of bromeliads. The way I think about the seed is if they have the little round seed like aechmea, neos, billbergias etc they can be crossed but if they have the fly away types like vrisea, tillandsia, alcants etc they can be crossed with each other but not the seeded ones like neos etc. I'm not up to crossing too many yet but have gone down the root of F2 of natural hybrids eg ones the birds have done for me. I think doing some of Alan Freemans plants should produce some wonderful hybrids as he seemed to use quality plants. Today Nev, we decided that all your seedlings which have become too big to remain in the seedling area had become lost in the main shadehouse area. We stumbled across a few during the redo so we decided to put dark blue dots on those pots. So if we see a blue spot we immediately know it is a seedling that we need to keep watch of development. We discovered some nice plants which we hadn't taken pups off before hiding in with all the others that we have plenty of. I even found one growing in full sun that I thought was just manoa beauty which we have plenty of so tried it growing in full sun a couple years back and found it thrived. Anyway we've been looking at this one thinking must take those pups off but we have so many that we just kept passing them over. Anyhow when I took them off today I was stunned to see it was actually neo catherine wilson. I like this plant as it is similar to neo mayo but much larger and I would never have considered it for a sun lover but somehow it got mixed up with the manoa beautys we keep in the sun on the side of the path. It was stunning and so big and much flatter than they usually grow. Will post pics tomorrow night of those.

Nev you ask about what we learned about the different ways of growing seed in takeaway trays. Well the one thing we learned was if they have holes in the lids don't put them at the front of the seedling houses with the doors rolled up on a night with heavy rain. We learned that the rain blows in sits in the recessed lid and slowly drips in through the air holes. WE found the seeds and seedlings swimming and only a few survived in each pot. The ones without airholes were fine of course but that screwed up our research. We had planted 2 trays of quite a few different seeds .. one without airholes and one with airholes. Same seed, same mix, planted same time only different amounts of air. Anyway we will try that again one day. The tillandsias definately prefer the airholes as once they start to grow they prefer to totally dry out before being wet again so air is good for them. The vriseas seem to do well either way as long as we give the ones with airholes more water than those without holes. We are now trying different potting mediums too. I don't like spaghnum moss as the seeds/seedlings tend to get lost in the growing moss, If i look closely I can find the little tillansias but I'm worried they will get smothered. I even thought about picking them out one by one and transferring them to another mix but I'll wait a bit longer. We are now mxing perlite into our seed raising choir mix. Hopefully it will prevent the mix going hard on top as it does when too much seed is sown of the vrisea, tillandsai type. It seems to form a mat on top which goes hard.

Nev you asked about the billbergia seedlings. No they are not the hallelujah ones. I'll have to check them tomorrow to see if they are growing. These are some we had here with no ID but they formed a good sized round ball of seed hanging from the spent flower. Easy to harvest when they are like that. Anyway they are now growing so fast. But the portea are the ones that are fast. I can't believe how they have grown in such a short time. I'll take a pic every 2 or 3 weeks to share with you all. I am still collecting the noetigii seed but they seem to only have one seed in each pod so it is slow going. I have a little envelope of them for you. It is an effort to collect those as i have to jump across the pond and grab a golden cane palm to prevent me falling back in. the noetigii is growing in the middle of the palm. Then I have to jump back again. I will send them to you as soon as I have enough to grow at least a dozen plants.

Must be off to bed again. Night all
Wendy

This message was edited Apr 19, 2012 11:41 PM