Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR MARCH ....2014, 1 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone Well the rain's back again; all night last night and continuing today. It's not heavy rain but steady nevertheless and enough to keep me out of the garden. I spent yesterday afternoon finishing off a bit of potting in the garage as well as putting the finishing touches to another little project I'm trialling. I also made up a stock of wire droppers from which I can suspend my pot hangers, so you can see I haven't been exactly idle even though it is raining.

Wendy – Pleased to hear you got sorted out to your satisfaction in the caravan park at last, and now you can sit back and finally take it easy.

I only have six of the Bill. 'Fred Red' x 'Hallelujah' seedlings and they are all different with each having its own appeal and they were part of a swap for some Neoregelia seedlings I made with a fellow "brom friend". Obviously I have fed them up a bit now to produce some pups a bit quicker, but as it's always been my policy to keep the first as a spare for myself and send the second one to the person who I swapped with, I don't expect to have many spares any time soon as they don't grow as quickly down here as they do in your warmer climate, however I'll still put your name on the back of the tags, but don't stand around on one leg waiting.

I also think the Ae 'Bert' (Dark leaf form) is a beaut, but I can't get the colour as intense as the lady I got it from in Far North Queensland as we just don't have that tropical environment it seems to need to bring out that colour. It is however putting up a couple of pups, but they are ever so slow, and they will slow down even more now with the cooler months approaching.

Your pet Magpies and Kookaburras will be dis-owning you for not arranging for someone to feed them in your absence. I've been feeding wild birds for over 50 years now and the one thing I've learned is you have to be totally committed, and just like any other pets, you must arrange for someone else to feed them when you can't. I know they can still get food in the wild, but they do tend to rely on the extras they are fed especially if they are feeding young. A lot of people say we shouldn't feed wild birds as they become too dependent on it, however I feel that we are obligated to assist them with a bit of supplementary food, as after all it's we humans who are ripping up their natural habitat for the use of housing and robbing them of their natural sources of food by land clearing.

That's a pretty good price for the home you speak of, and an ideal place to perhaps start up a brom nursery, however there's no way in the world I would ever consider a slab on the ground house after the water damage I've seen around here in the last week where the water has just run through them like a river. I'll stick to the old way where my house is built up off the ground on brick piers; it might mean a couple of steps to climb which is a bit taxing on your arthritis as you get older, but certainly better then being flooded out.

You mention Face Book groups which jogged my memory of a thread that Jack Koning has started to do with naming of “grexes”. I remember the same discussion back in 2009 on the old Bromeliad Garden Web Forums and it seemed to go on for weeks. In the end there was still no definite conclusion as the participants were pretty evenly divided between those for, those against and those undecided, but it was an excellent discussion and some very good points were put forward and it will be interesting to see how this one on Face Book turns out.

That's a great idea with the bike wheel trellis; I must try it out as it would look great with Sweet Peas growing all around it or even climbing Geraniums. Some years ago I used an old bike wheel which I suspended horizontally by a bit of chain from an overhead beam. From this I hung about fifteen 4” pots of miniature Neo's at various heights (a bit like a mobile). It too looked good, but you had to be careful you balanced them just right otherwise the whole lot tipped over.

Theresa – Unfortunately it seems always the case that almost all of these redundancy packages are weighted firmly in favour of the employer and it's just the same here in Australia. I doesn't matter how loyal you have been or how long you have worked for them, when "push comes to shove" you are just another number for the “Bean Counters” to juggle around.

Good luck anyway, and hopefully you'll come up with something in the near future. You can always start your brom collection sooner that you had planned.

Trish – Like you say, everything grows with a vengeance after a good shower of rain, unfortunately that's the last thing I need, I just want my plants to “slow down” so I have better chance of catching up. It's just so dis-heartening to see the seedlings so overgrown in their pots and in need of urgent re-potting and not having anywhere to put them. I guess that's the price I'm paying now for not being a “ruthless culler”, however it's easy to be wise after the event and still doesn't help solve my problem.

Like you say it's bad luck Ian didn't have time to visit you and/or Rob as I'm sure he would have been impressed with both of your collections, and Rob as well as being a well know hybridiser is also a fountain of knowledge which he is always keen to share with interested parties....However, there's always next time.

Yes Trish “slammed “ is probably a very good word to describe the rain we had. I've been in this area for 73 years and I've never seen anything like it before. Fortunately our local council has a very good programme of drain maintenance and there was very little local flooding due to blocked up drains, unlike a lot of other areas where the councils do nothing with their drains until after a flood occurs....Does “Closing the gate after the horse has bolted” sound familiar?

Firstly, let me say thanks for putting my name down for a pup from Neo 'Jinx' when you get a spare. Secondly, let me say it seems I'm guilty of not doing what I tell others to do when assessing and comparing plants, and that is to look at the “whole” plant which is obvious when I read what you say about seeing similarities.

I had noticed the similarities of the leaf width and shape but what I didn't notice until just now is that your plant doesn't appear to be fully mature whereas the one on the BCR is in full flower. So if yours has a bit of colouring up to do yet and it was grown in more light than the one on the BCR, this could explain why they look so different, and indeed they may both be the same plant after all. I suppose it's good that we can all make mistakes as it would be a pretty boring old world if we were all always right and never wrong.

As for selling Bill's, yes I do have a lot of brom's for sale including Bill's, but as usual I've been “slack” and still don't have a Bill. list completed. People come here and buy a few plants from time to time but I feel pretty guilty each time I sell some Bill's as I've been promising my forum friends for some time I would make up a list and send it to them and as yet it just hasn't happened. I'll try and get onto it and send you a copy as soon as I get it.

I love the Vriesea pic's; two very beautiful plants and I can understand why you had to have them.

Time to go again and the first three of today's pic's show just what happens when you don't cull your seedlings when you should. To give some idea of size, the polystyrene boxes they are standing in are 3” high. Pic. 4 might be of interest to Joe and Trish as it's a little Miltonia orchid I bred years ago when I was into orchids (Milt.'Kismet' x Milt. 'Purple Queen') and just to show I don't kill or lose everything Trish sends me Pic. 5 is one of the Gingers she sent but I don't know which one but I'll post a pic when it flowers.

All the best, Nev.