NEWS East London LETTER Bromeliad Society May 2018 South Africa Established: 25 July 2009 Our aim is to promote and encourage awareness and interest in Bromeliads in East London and all of South Africa! ELBS is an Affiliated Society of Bromeliad Society International A Garden Meeting ! We met for the April meeting in the lovely surrounds and shade of Les and Andre Dry’s garden in Beacon Bay. Considering it was a long weekend there were 35 of us including 5 visitors attending. Awesome! It was good to welcome Dawid Botha, country member from Port Elizabeth and his family who travelled up for the day and also managed to squeeze in visits to Lyn Wegner and Dr Pete Pfister’s gardens. This was our first visit to this lovely garden with large beds of Bromeliads, Les Dry with two of her much loved Great Clivia and Danes. ferns all under old well established trees. Les and Andre moved f r o m Johannesburg about 20 years ago and coming to the Eastern Cape presented Les with a very different kind Some views of Les’s lovely well kept garden and top right with 2 of her beloved dogs. Above, Les taking a cutting of a pendulous form of Sansevieria for Ester Botha. of gardening experience with regard to growing conditions. The house and garden were extremely neglected and Les set to planting many trees and plants mostly from slips of this and that and propagating her own plants to fill the beds. Then she discovered that bromeliads would do well as the soil layer is very shallow. The garden is landscaped to surround the living area, patio and pool decks with an amazing view of the Beacon Bay Country Club and the Nahoon River below. Ideal for a sundowner!!! The gardens are well maintained by Kobus Venter’s Garden Service, some of you will know Kobus as a grower of orchids. Les is also an animal Next Meeting: Sunday 27th May at 2 for 2.30pm. Hosted by Brenda and Bryan Wegner at 19 Putney Avenue, Nahoon Valley. Don’t forget to bring your chair if you want a seat. East London Bromeliad Society South Africa May 2018 Page 1 behaviourist with 4 lovely Great Danes, 2 of which she recently rescued from a very sad environment. Keep up the good work Les and thank you for sharing your lovely, special place with all of us. It was a busy meeting with Dr Pete Pfister sharing his journey of growing Bromeliads , quite a few members brought Show and Tell plants and Dudley Reynolds shared some of his super Cryptanthus with us amongst all the other usual meeting procedures. Some things I’ve learnt about growing Bromeliads for 20 years Dr Pete Pfister Heather and I moved from Cape Town to East London in 1973, planning to stay for just a year and I am still here! We bought our home in Beacon Bay in 1975 and started out by planting about 25 trees, which after all this time has meant that there is too much shade in the garden. The soil was very poor, not much would grow. Heather arrived home one day with a Bromeliad purchased from Pioneer Nursery. lt got planted and grew very well. Needless to say more followed and I got hooked. That was about 20 years ago! I felt I had to get every different variety I could find. I would go and do locums in the Transkei to make extra money and then visit Eric Dodd (Tracy Moss’s dad) at Pioneer Nursery to buy some more broms. I bought an Aechmea ‘Ensign’ for R50 from Donald Page at Amalinda Nursery, in those days that was a huge sum of money to pay for a single plant. Then I met Stella van Gas on her farm at Crossways who also had loads of plants. I made a special trip to Durban where broms seemed to really grow well and loaded up with some more Dr Pete Pfister keeping us all entertained varieties, visiting the Durban Botanical gardens as well, who also sold under the shade of a lovely old tree, perfect Bromeliads in those days. for the meeting space. I met Tracy’s grandfather and Neville Bauer through FELA (Friends of the EL Aquarium) and acquired more plants. I also got broms from Ray’s Palms in Natal and then discovered Lyn Wegner at Bromeliads for Africa. I accumulated Bromeliads from many different sources over the early years. I had to build a shade house and used bamboo at first, then I constructed a sturdier one using tanalised poles, not realising that these treated poles were fatal for bromeliads as they are treated with copper. When it rained all the broms under the poles got severely damaged. Then I had to use plastic piping to cover the poles. I used 40% shade cloth, red being the best colour. Avoid green. White and black are better options. I used galvanised shelving, those shelves are still going strong. Soil mix is crucial to growing healthy Bromeliads . It must be well draining. I add lots of stone gathered from the road gravel, pool gravel that has been well washed, plus polystyrene balls, bark and topsoil with some bone meal added. I have a potting station where I make my potting medium. I bought a Vriesea ‘Red Chestnut’ and lost it and its 6 pups through rot because the soil mix was not draining enough, a sad lesson. Try to collect the genera that appeals to you the most and that suits your growing area, the size of your garden, what kind of shade and sun conditions you have. Some bromeliads grow really big, so need plenty of room and are good for landscaping in a big garden. Space has become a huge problem for me as broms send out pups and more pups, so I have spread over into the land next to my property and called it the ‘Squatter Camp’ with the biggest and spikiest broms at the perimeter to keep out the uninvited! Pests: The biggest problem is scale on broms. I use Mospilan, used by citrus farmers which can be obtained from Farmarama. I also use Nemesis and a wetting agent to get the chemical to stick to the plant to kill the scale. Always follow the mixing instructions very carefully. Never use any oil-based treatment like Oleum on your broms you will kill them as Bromeliad s breathe and feed through their leaves. A solution to prevent scale developing in the first place, is to ensure that your plants are grown well spaced to allow for air circulation. When they grow in compacted dry clumps that have multiplied, that is the ideal breeding ground for scale. So, when growing Bromeliads, select your favourite genus, use a well drained potting mix, label your plants well using a permanent marker on plastic labels that won’t deteriorate over time. You won’t remember all the names and it is important to know what you have in your collection when you want to sell or swap plants or buy more, especially as you grow older and forget things! Be warned that puppies love ripping bromeliads out the ground and crunching them up, they seem to like the smell of the rotting debris in the water in the cups of some broms. Again, avoid anything with copper in it, it is death to bromeliads. I personally do not fertilise my plants. That is another debate altogether. East London Bromeliad Society South Africa May 2018 Page 2 What species is that? - Lyn Wegner I decided we would do 2 species this month. These are both tiny Neoregelia species endemic (found only) in Brazil. Neoregelia lilliputiana is found in Espirito Santo in Brazil. It propagates by stolons 5cm in length. It has stiff green foliage, maroon barred on the underside and some maroon spots on the upper side. Mine is growing outside where it gets morning sun. I read somewhere that they like moisture but I don't give mine any Neoregelia lilliputiana Neoregelia dungsiana extra water and it manages just fine, looking gorgeous as a clump in a bowl. Neoregelia dungsiana grows as an epipiphyte in the forest in Rio de Janiero in Brazil. This is another tiny species, smaller and to me not as attractive as N. lilliputiana but still cute. It too, propagates by long pendulous stolons. It has stiff bright green foliage with some leaves having a black edged tip. It is growing in the same position as the N. lilliputiana and also gets no extra attention. It has also clumped nicely in a bowl. I will experiment, mount a couple and monitor their progress as an epiphyte. Show and Tell Dudley Reynolds showed and dis- Dr Pete Pfister showed us his very at- Dr Boots Horsfall showed and cussed an assortment of his beau- tractive Tillandsia vernicosa. wanted an id for his nice clump tifully grown Cryptanthus. of Aechmea recurvata. Dawid Botha , our country member from Port Elizabeth brought four gorgeous, beautifully grown Neoregelia from his collection to show and discuss. Dawid Botha and his stunning Neorgelia. Thanks for bringing them to show us Dawid, especially Neoregelia ‘Margaret’ with an amazingly deep growth form. Beautifully grown. East London Bromeliad Society South Africa May 2018 Page 3 Lyn Wegner showed xVrieslandsia ‘Swamp Fire’. A beautiful John Arden bigeneric hybrid which was registered in 2001. Bigeneric meaning a cross between 2 different genera, in this case, a Vriesea and a Tillandsia . The seed parent is Vriesea inflata while the pollen parent is Tillandsia multicaulis.