Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS FOR NOVICES AND ADDICTS - JULY 2014, 1 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – It seems like I’m able to post again because if Teresa can see it in Kiwi Land" so should everyone in Australia. I still don’t know what the problem was and I’m still getting the strange symbols on the draft everywhere I put a punctuation mark.

Teresa – Sorry to hear you’re crook still, I think you may have tried to do too much too soon. However, I’m sure that Sugar won’t mind having to keep you company minding the fire.

Colleen – With your little seedlings, you could always bring them inside the house until the cold weather and frosts have passed, it won’t do them any harm.

Gee it’s good to hear your boys are exploring and enjoying nature as opposed to being on the streets and wrecking things like many other kids do. I’ve often wondered if these kids that are responsible for vandalisation ever had the opportunity to explore nature and enjoy it like your boys and other country kids do; and if they did, would they still be wrecking things instead of respecting them?

As for your “dumb-founded” neighbour (who obviously never climbed trees as a kid), is he one of these people who thinks kids should be wrapped in cotton wool and not allowed to do anything in case they hurt themselves? Kids have to be given the chance to do practical things, make mistakes and learn from them, they can’t learn everything from books and computers. If they make a mistake which results in them being hurt, they’ll know not to do it again.

The difference in my Ae pectinata to yours is firstly they are obviously two different clones; secondly mine is growing in a shady area with low light which accounts for the deeper colour and darker leaves.

When I first got this plant I was told, “grow it in full sun”, and I did. The green colour of the foliage bleached to almost yellow and what is pink now was almost bleached white from the sun. In fact I nearly lost the plant and it was so sick I put it where it is now with a good drink of Seasol not expecting it to survive. However it put up a couple of pups one of which was the plant in the picture I posted, and I still have it growing in the same area which isn’t where the “experts” told me to grow it.

That’s a great shot of the boys and their dog, he looks very much like “Murray” one of my sons two dogs we recently minded.

Trish – There’s nothing like a good sleep to re-charge the batteries and gee you must have Joe well trained also; I hope you look after him as well. I was also once told that eggs are good for a dog’s coat and when the bloke next door saw me feeding them a boiled egg each, he said that they are supposed to be raw not cooked.

He had greyhounds and a raw egg a day was all part of his dog's daily diet along with grated carrot, broken up hard dog biscuits and shin beef (among other things). Anyway, respecting his better knowledge of dogs I started giving my dogs a raw egg every few days and sure enough, their coat seemed to glisten. There was a problem though and when our chooks stopped producing eggs (or so we thought) I found that the dogs liked the eggs so much they were getting into the chook run and helping themselves to the eggs, so we had to build a new fence all around the chook yard.

It seems like you’re both enjoying the benefits of the new tunnel house and although it seems like there’s heaps of space in there yet, it won’t be long before it’s full and then (like everyone else) more you’ll be telling us you’ve run out of room…. been there and done that.

They’re nice pic’s of Vrieseas you’ve posted today, but how about some names please. I love the nice wide leaves of the plant in Pic.4 but my favourite has to be the very dark one at the top left of Pic.5… beautiful colour.

Following yoiur comment on Nid.'Litmus', what fascinates me most is how it changes its colour as it matures much more than most other plants do.

Time to go again and today’s pictures are of Nidularium ‘Litmus’ just to show the changing colours in this plant. We start from Pic.1 when it was first colouring and through to the last picture when it was starting to decline.

All the best, Nev.