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

perke_patch wrote:
Hi everyone.
Sue I am still have hit and miss with the billbergia crossing. Russ Holzheimer told me to always lick your finger and wet the (is it???) stamen then if possible just tickle 2 flowers together until your wet stamen is liberally covered with yellow pollen. It becomes clear when you have ripening pods as they become fat and green while others shrivel up and turn brown. Next thing is to identify when seed is ready to harvest. I was told to watch for when it changes colour and becomes squishy. Trial and error is the best way with this. It is obvious once you succeed the first time. I squeeze the seed onto a very fine sieve and run the tap over it then sit the whole lot in the sun to dry out. when dry they just scrape off the sieve and can be poured into envelope or straight onto potting medium. For bills I use a deep dish so I can allow them to grow bigger before potting. As I said I am still having hit and miss results and still trying to work out how to identify the crossed pods. Toothpicks tend to fall out so I have 1 plant with 3 sticks in pot showin what cross has been done but only 1 toothpick left. Will have to guess the cross for other pods.

Shirley good to see you here today. I am so sorry I wasn't able to sit and chat with you. I really wanted to and was looking forward to having a cuppa. I tried to get rid of other family first so we could sit and chat but they weren't intending to oblige us. It was about 1:30 when I got upstairs for a cuppa and bite to eat. anytime you want to come for a drive and a chat to get some of Johnny's vriseas give us call. better than waiting for sale and risk being interupted like today. Sorry Johnny couldn't hang around while you were here. They told us that the elderly often have one really good lucid day before giving up and when Johnny went there today with his brother and sister his mum was actually awake and able to talk. she still said a few strange things but they did have a good time with her. Wonder if this is the lucid day before the end??? She has been in a bit of a comatose state recently and getting worse. Ah well time will tell.

Olive wrote on the fb forum that peggy bailey came from peggy bailey in USA and Olive brought it back and called it PB after the hybridiser. She listed the cross but of course someone had to come back and state that BCR listed different parents and thought it was just a jaws. Olive said she could only state what her records said she brought back and named. anyway I believe they are different plants with different habits so I will not be changing labels any time soon. It took a long time to mature but now that it has it is spitting pups out. have a few now but still small. will establish them a bit more before thinking of selling. I think Shirley wanted one today so I'll have to put her name on one.

we better get an ealry night tonight and prepare for a big weekend.
Pic 1 is ae red ribbons which is flowering at the moment.
Pic 2 is one of our pendula aechmeas which are all flowering atm too.

Night all
Wendy