I keep going back through this thread drooling over Carol's beautiful plants!
Aaah ... a journey to Paradise, sounds wonderful! I can't imagine being on an airplane for the long hours it takes to get there, but once I got there I probably wouldn't want to ever leave anyway! If I ended up buying a lot of beautiful plants (which is a certainty) it would be cost prohibitive to ship them back to the mainland, so I'd probably have to consider relocating. ^_^
OK OK...I went berserk at the BIAN Sale
Yeah, you wouldn't want to leave.
During the rainy season the evening rains lull you to sleep on the galvanized roof top. Periodically you wake up during the evening to the sound of a real intense rain and it's so peaceful you can't keep your eyes open. In the morning you wake up and the first view is tropical extravegance staring you in the face which paralyzes you for a while as you take in every detail. You can imagine what it's like once you get out into it..you can be lost for quite some time.
Just came back from the sunday market with more bromiliads...I think I am nuts!!! Pictures to come....
Nuts yes...happy yes...
Randy...there may be another BIAN sale in August...I will find out....
Carol
My next holidays are April and end of May.
thinking end of May, pending schedules for all..and that will be on the eve of my 50th.
Whoa...!! 50?!!!!
Yes ...50...I'll be hiding, I had big to doos at 30 and 40, don't need one for this end of the spectrum!
Here's one of my bromeliads brightening up after 3 days of rain which ended a period of 3 months of drought like conditions.
Nice Vriesa...I love them!!!!
Hi all and hope was a good weekend. Don't know where it was, but thought there was some observation by Carol about not fertilizing bromeliads. Anyhoo, not knowing the formulation, but I can say this will be funny- my favorite thing is to pot up bromeliads into................lava rock. Well, with some bark and this and that. Lava rock is pretty nutritious, in fact, very nutritious. It is the least "weathered" of most other soils in the world. I fertilized a terrestrial bromeliad bed once, and it was many many years old. If anything, I think it responded more to the renewed soil than the fertilizer.
But, back to lava rock for a moment. I've topdressed palms with it.......I swear it makes well attented palms greener. Good stuff, and wish I had it in my backyard!
Thanks ...I may give that a whirl this year..I've been using sphangnum moss, but most of them have been plugged into various rock locations in the garden borders and ponds now.
I use lava sand in a lot of stuff...
I hadn't heard of lava sand. Where do you get yours? I use coarse sand as an element of my own soil mix.
Is the sand pyroclastic, or is it ground up lava?
I have everything in this blog, it's ground up lava
http://davesgarden.com/community/blogs/t/rjuddharrison/1720/
there is a picture of the bag, and of the sand
Thanks Rj! Powdered lava is a valuable mineral supplement for the soil here; it is manufactured. However, the volcano makes some sand, through a series of violent explosions (pyroclastic sand).
Aloha, Dave
Great blog.
thanks!