Australian and New Zealand Gardening: Bromeliads for Novices and Addicts - August 2013, 1 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – It seems like everyone is copping the wind over these last few days. Yesterday afternoon the wind here became gale force for about three quarters of an hour and blew down a very large branch from my neighbour's 130 year old Norfolk Island Pine. It fell on his garage roof and bounced off and crashed onto the concrete path below. When it hit the path it did so with an almighty crash exploding into smaller pieces some of which landed on our roof and front porch. There were broken tiles on the neighbour's garage but fortunately no damage to our place, but it did give us a bit of a shock as I thought initially it had broken the window in the bathroom. It does however make you appreciate the strength of Mother Nature.

Ian – It must be a very busy time for you with your group meeting and market day on the same day. Brom's, brom's everywhere and decisions on which ones to buy.

I don't know about Alcantarea seedlings Ian as I don't grow them, but I find with my other seedlings when they stop growing, it's time to start feeding if they aren't large enough to transplant; if they are large enough well then it's time for some new potting mix and a bit more room to grow. As for some of them being unstable, I had this happen once and when I knocked them out of the container I found a curl grub under the mix and I suspect it may have done the damage to the roots.

I've never had any success with Cryptanthus and I now realise that it's probably because I was using the wrong shape and size container. There are some beautifully patterned types around and I'm determined to have another go sometime in the future just to satisfy myself that they can be grown here where I live. I've since done a bit of reading about them and also see where they are pretty good feeders as well and this could have been part of my problem as well as I didn't feed them on the advice of another grower who obviously didn't know what he was talking about.

What you say about the 'Charm' hybrid you posted could well be correct as it may well have been grown from 'Charm' seed without any knowledge of the pollen parent. Writing the name label as 'Charm' hybrid at least does tell us that the seed parent was Charm. Far better than no label at all and just relegating it to the ranks of the many thousands of NOIDS.

Neo.'Charm' has produced some very nice plants when used as a parent as the 41 registrations on the BCR will attest.
See: http://botu07.bio.uu.nl/bcg/bcr/index.php?fields=Parents&id=...

Thanks for the offer of a Bill.'Fantail' pup, I'm sure I probably have another Bill I can give you in exchange (any ideas?).

As for the beige shade cloth, I wasn't aware of what you say about it stopping 41% of the uv radiation, however it seems to be correct as I remember last year which was the first summer I had it on the roof and I was getting a bit worried as the hot weather approached, and even with the two heatwave days and with a lot of plants hanging up high, I didn't get a single plant suffer any damage from the sun's rays, so I guess that has to be proof enough.

Speaking about turning plants around, I was once told by a show judge that the best way to get a nice uniform plant both in shape and colour was to give it ¼ turn every week; I don't know if it works as I haven't tried it, but the judge that told me is a very knowledgeable bloke and I have no reason to doubt him, but I just keep forgetting to try it. I can understand how disappointed you must have been when you burnt your Neo Miranda, but maybe it mightn't have got burned if you had tuned it just a little each week as that judge recommended to me.

I'm not at all experienced in the names of Billbergias but I do know there are many different forms of Bill. Amoena and it's hybrids, so that name may not be incorrect after all. As you say though there are a lot of blotches in it and I would have expected a “rubra” to be just the one colour. I do have one of the smaller growing Bill. Amoena types and that will get a pale bronze type colour with some lighter blotching on the foliage when grown in high light and when shade grown the foliage is just plain light green. So like everything else, I think it gets down to the amount of light it's grown under.

That's a very artistic pic of 'Super Duper Grace' with the sun shining behind it. Do you know if it was bred from Bill.'Super Grace'?

I also like your Bill.'Tickled Pink' which I think from memory has Bill.'Strawberry' in it's parentage as I remember a friend who gave me some of his seedlings in which he used Bill.'Strawberry' as a parent mentioning it was also a parent of Bill.'Tickled Pink'. I must look it up and see what the BCR tells me about it.

Yes the old “Black Ointment”, you can still buy it and it's called Ichthammol. The white one you speak of is now sold under the name of Magnaplasm and was just a paste made from Epsom Salts and used originally on horses. The black one wasn't as severe as the white one but was quite messy while the white one was easily washed off as it was water soluble.

As for Bates Salve, I remember as a kid I once had a boil on the back of my neck and my older brother's mate said he knew how to fix it with this Bates Salve so he went home and got it. I still remember it looking something like a light brown square shaped thick crayon. Anyway I was told to lie on the floor on my belly and the next thing I knew there was this burning pain on my neck as he had melted it with a lighted match and dripped it directly on my boil; to this day I still cringe every time I hear that name.

More nice pic's in your second lot, but a word of warning about the Bill. 'Foster's Striate', it is a nice plant but I always found it seemed to attract soft scale much more than any other plant, so best keep an eye on it. Nice Guzzie pic's also especially the two albo-marginated ones.

Sue – It's about time you visited us again, I don't know, you always seem to be tripping off somewhere enjoying pub lunches while we're all either at work or at home working, anyway good onya, you're only young once so make the most of it.

That plant of Ian's (Ae. Gigantea) which you mention may not be correctly named, I have also found that FloraPix Brom-L Picture Gallery is another good site to get ID's.

Thanks for the tip on using styrofoam as backing boards for stags or elks, I must give that a go. I only ever made a wooden backing board and covered it with an old hessian bag or a bit of old carpet and mounted the plants on that. It does work well but will rot down in time so maybe the styrofoam is a better option.

I only ever went skating once and spent most of the night sliding around on the ice on my bum, not very pleasant with a frozen bum all night.

They're nice looking plants of Canistrum triangulare and I'll bet they're a real picture when they send up that brilliant scarlet coloured flower. That's also a beautifully coloured Cryptanthus as well, and thanks for the tip about the African Violet mix, maybe it was my mix that was why I couldn't grow them.

Cody – That was just a little bit of a joke and was based on a book I once read called “Let's talk Strine” Without really realising it some of us do tend to put a different accent on different words and sometimes clip them short as well and as that's what we've learned to live with we don't notice it. It seems to be more common with people who come from a country background and I was just trying to spell some of the words the way I say them.
To translate what I wrote (Lesson 2 in Strine) …...Ow = (How); Youse = (plural of you) and meaning you and Alex; goin = (going); ere's = (here is); ya = (your)
Now your homework for the day is to learn all of these and there will be a test next week, Ha Ha.

More random pic's around the yard to finish up with again today. Pic.1 is one of my only three Alcantareas and called 'Extensa' (I think) please correct me if it's wrong. Pic.2 is looking in toward the Frog Pond which is just to the right of centre and if you look closely you will see the leaves of the Water Iris sticking up. Pic's.3 and 4 are plants hanging in front of the fence at the rear of the Frog Pond and Pic.5 are some hanging plants in another shade house where I once had a vegie garden. Notice how much better the colour is in the last pic which is an area with beige shade cloth when compared with the other pic's from areas with green shade cloth

All the best, Nev.