Australian and New Zealand Gardening: bromeliads for novices and addicts, sep, 2012, 1 by ianperry

ianperry wrote:
Hi all,So many so beautiful broms and the colours are fantastic. I am fairly certain that copper is not my problem as my plants have been away from treated timber for 6 months. Some have never been near it here. I am very interested in an article by Darryl Ganter on the treatment of rot using unwashed beach sand and Captan. I have tried drying out the plants and washing with Miltons, leave for an hour then wash this off , dry out again and only water the roots, it is working on some plants, possibly because I noticed it early enough. The article was in The Illawarra Bromeliad Society IncClub news 04/07 that I just stumbled on while doing research. I printed it out on 13/05/12.
The flowers on the plants that I'm hoping to cross were not open when I left for work at 6.00 this morning but were partly open this afternoon and had a trail of ants going to and fro. I shook a fine probe inside and collected some pollen and tried to transfer it across both ways. I have marked these flowers with a drinking straw over each of then so that I will know which ones have been tampered with. One can get a variety of coloured drinking straws and I believe Margaret Patterson uses this method. I am keeping these plants upstairs on the verandah until they finish flowering. Out of sight out of mind.
Thanks for correcting my Ae Aztec gold, I am going to make mistakes and need to get it right All my Ananas in full sun are flowering now and on looking at lucidus it has spots caused in this case by flyspec scale. It is in the front of the yard and everything gois past it to my quarrantine area, looks like I need my quarrantine area on the footpath but I don't think the council would take kindly to that. Another bush house on the other side of the driveway could be the answer.
My thinking was that Black Mystic could have been it's name, but it seems more brown and in places there are tinges of green.I realise that 2 plants from the same clone could colour differentlyn due to different growing conditions.It is 1 that I erred on the side of caution. I will let those who know more than me guide me, I am a beginner, especially with identification.
I just took all diseased leaves off Ae red ribbon and found a fair bit of debris in there, holding lots of water, I'll keep it on the verandah for a while too.
This is a nice NOID for pic1
Pic2 a group of crypts
Pic 3 inside west end of bush house
Pic 4 Vr Splendens showing baby pups last week
Pic 5 Alacantrea vinicolour "Hawaiin Sunrise"