Congrats, Lyndi. They look very nice.

Xuan

i love the left hand side plant :)

Hi! hlyau

The left-hand one is xNeophytum 'Galactic Warrior'

and the right-hand one is Orthophytum vagans (albo-marginated).

Hi Lyndi,

You're lucky to have such great friends. I also have a Galactic Warrior and it's one of my favourite plants. I find the only thing you have to watch is that the leaves are very brittle and easily broken.

I had an eye opening experience at one of our monthly meetings where I had put one of these beautiful plants on the table for the monthly point score. While I was talking to a friend a lady member was showing her visiting friend the plant and remarked on how brittle the leaves were, and to make her point, she snapped the last couple of centimeters off on one of the leaves. I was dumbstruck and lost for words. But worse was to come as her friend said "are they really that brittle" and she proceeded to break the tip off another leaf.

I was very good though, I didn't throw any punches, but they were both given a solid lesson in respect for other people's plants. "These are the things that are sent to try us".

Finally, is that tree fern chunks they are growing in?

Thanks for posting, all the best, Nev.

Nev,

Some people are really inconsiderate, they don't understand it takes a long time for a bromeliad plant to grow out an ugly leaf.

I am not sure what to pot them in so I just pot them in coco/sand mix and I use the fern bark chunks support the plants. As we get plenty of rain here, most of my neoregelias are grown in fern bark chips, topped with coco fibres. Any suggestion as what is the best potting mix for these plants in my climate?

Lyndi

Hi Lyndi,

Sorry I can't give you any advice for your climate (Where's Stephania when we need him, he'd know for sure).

For what it's worth, I'm on the east coast of NSW Australia, which is a very different climate to yours and I expect has much lower humidity and rainfall than you do.
I grow mine in a mix of (APPROX.) 50% Pine bark chips, 30% Coco-Peat, 10% Charcoal, 5% 3mm polystyrene and 5% Perlite.

They are hanging from the roof beneath 50% shade cloth and get a good watering every second day in summer and twice weekly in winter, but they do dry out quickly in that mix.

I don't know if that's the correct mix or not but I work on the rule that if it works OK for me I don't change it.

A friend of mine grows them very well and she uses straight commercial Cymbidium Orchid Mix and feeds them with liquid fowl manure.

I also read somewhere, where they respond well to heavy fertilizing, but at this stage I haven't tried it myself.

I don't know if that's any help or not, but some of our G.W. Growers from a similar climate could better advise you than I.

All the best, Nev.

Nev, you must have had to bite clean through your tongue to keep silent on that one! It was thoughtless enough to damage your plant, but to do it when it was being scored must surely have cost you points. What goes through some people's minds, I wonder? Perhaps she had a competing plant and was looking to even the score!

I had sort of a similar experience years ago when our club was putting together a display for the annual orchid show. It wasn't a judged competition, but one of those naturalized mini-garden assemblages, so plants didn't need to be perfect, just create a nice effect. I had a big clump of Till. tricolor with nice red leaves, which I thought would make a good filler. It did have some browned tips, but they didn't detract much from the overall appearance, which was delicate and graceful. I dropped it off with the show chairman, and when I came back to see the display I saw she had cut every one of those tips straight across like a mowed lawn. It looked terrible, like a shaved hedgehog! I said they could use it, not butcher it, grrrrr.

All of the xNeophytums made with O. navioides are indeed very brittle, as is O. nav itself. That is always a big problem when I am transporting them to sales, as well as in the greenhouse. They do have one mitigating trait, however-- it is relatively easy to remove a single leaf without disturbing the symmetry of the rest of the plant. Try that on a Neo and you'll likely create a gap, plus they are a lot harder to remove.

I grow both in the same mix I use for Neos (and pretty much everything else). Orthos are terrestrial and can't be grown completely epiphytically, but in a moist, tropical environment you can get away with a lighter media like tree fern or coconut fiber, if that's what you would normally use for other broms. They just need something to root into and don't like to dry out too much. We use a high proportion of porous black cinder in our mix, supplemented with peat and perlite, but you just have to find whatever works and is easily available in your area.

Hi Lisa,

Just to set the record straight, neither of the women had plants on the point score table and I think it was just done without considering the effect of what they did. It was just as though it was a bit of grass they were breaking off.

They now know different, and yes my tongue was a bit bruised come to think of it.

All the best, Nev.

Lisa,

Thanks for the potting advice!