You have quite a lot of beautiful broms! And there are actually quite a lot that I would not mind laying my hands on. And they are all beautifully grown!!!

I am sure nobody will mind if you 'over do' it, in fact, most of us will LOVE it!!

Japie

They look perfect. Whatever you're doing, keep it up, they seem to like it. Love the Tacca too!

Yes, like Lisa said, perfect. Please post more photos. Thanks!

Absolutely beautiful- more photos please. How long have you been a `loonie' for & what are your growing conditions? They are some of the best grown plants we've ever seen.

Hi Bromaloonie and everyone else.

What a magnificent array of colour and beautiful healthy looking plants. Wow! what a collection. Please keep the pic's coming.
Are they growing in a tunnel shade house and by the way, what part of Aus. are you from? Somewhere tropical I suppose.
Thanks for sharing, all the best Nev.

Oh my goodness, thankyou so much for your responses, its made me feel quite chuffed....
And for Lisa and Inang to say Perfect....well...that is so cool
Jaga and Splinter, I have been a 'Loonie' haha for just under 3 years.
For 2 years solid every time i went out i hunted them down, i needed them. I would spend all spare money on them....i was an absolute loonie...i needed more more more....im sure some of you understand where im coming from...heheeeee,
BUT for the past 6 months i have not bought any due to my husbands health and lacking funds..... as for my growing conditions, that would have to be most of my help of course. If i lived in cooler areas i would not probably suceed as well.
I am in the Tropics of Far North Queensland up in the northern end of the Atherton tablelands.
I am seeking other people like minded in my area or near abouts here, that would be just so awesome.It would be nice to have friendship with others who love broms so I can get to meet and talk with.
We get cool (to 5 degrees)in winter while being very dry and warm/humid/wet in summer.We can have scorchers some weeks and very dry so i must be on the ball

Yep Yep, they are in a shade tunnel that hubby and I made a year ago and its been the best thing for them lighting wise, as there are lots of different light requirements just in that one tunnel for all different light requiring broms.

I will go and find some more pics to show you
I think i posted some pics here maybe a year ago? or just under a year? but i have not been back here since then.

Think this fella is Gigantica, would have to check out the tag again
{{gwi:436695}}

my Platty...just love this guy
{{gwi:436696}}
some bits and pieces
{{gwi:436697}}
Middnight and PLum good
{{gwi:436699}}
{{gwi:436701}}
{{gwi:436703}}
{{gwi:436705}}

the tunnel, as you can see we have had to chuck up some more cloth when the heat was extreme and to save them from bleaching, we will pull that down in the winter time i supose
{{gwi:436706}}
{{gwi:436709}}

I have more in my camera but have not yet put them onto the computer, so will chuck some more pics in here another time

Simply divine, Gemaloonie!
How I wish I could get the form and colour to my neos like you do up north. Your tunnel looks like Heaven. Thanks for the great photos.

Cheers,
Kerry

SUPERB , the cooler tropical tablelands seems to bring out the best form and colour . There are many growers up there . You will find some like minded people , you need a group up there as many don't like to travel down to Cairns for the group there .

Hello Kerry. I think i was bidding on one of your broms the other night? not sure if it was one of your vriesias but was not home and lost it...ahhh well maybe another time. Im *garden*gems* by the way
If ever you are up this way you are most welcome into my slice of heaven for a visit...LOL
Hello Aroideana, Sue (capeoasis)is just down the road and i have another friend in Tolga who was here yesterday and i will be seeing her next weekend but other then that i dont know others.
But yes i totally agree that there should be a tablelands meet here
Do I remember correctly and you are in north of mossman?or somewhere down there?
If ever you too are in my area in Julatten then please do somehow let me know and i can give you directions(we are on the highway by the way and you cant miss our tunnel so pop in anytime*smile*

SO sorry Kerry, i had you confused with anniesam

Bromaloonie,

Great looking plants, like everyone else I would love to see some more.

Thanks,

Rick

The colours are so beautiful.
Love your bat plant.

Hi Bromaloonie

From what you say you have a disease called "bromeliitis" caused by an uncontrolable passion for collecting bromeliads.

Unfortunately there is no known cure for this problem but it is possible to treat the symptoms.

The treatment is to regularly correspond with other afflicted people of which there are many on this site and to regularly post pic's of your plants to be viewed by and discussed by the other afflicted patients.

You say it would be great to have some like-minded friends in your area; well the Bromeliad Forum is only a keyboard away and we're really very friendly people who would love for you to join us on a more regular basis so we can look at your pic's and discus brom growing in general.

Hope you take up the invite, all the best, Nev.

P.S. Is your tunnel house covered with white shadecloth with the green being what you added for extra shade?

Absolutely spectacular! Thanks for sharing. Your pictures really brighten up an otherwise bleak mid-winter day here in the great frozen north!
Paul

Awwwwwww thanks so much for the compliments *smile*

Im pretty sure it is a disease
and i would love to come here on a regualr basis actually
I do tend to shy away from you guys of high knowledge in the brom way. I just find it all a heap of gobbledegook that i just cant fathom...im a basics girl thats for sure. I have loads of questions tho becasue i do want to learn some things along the way.

The Tunnel is of a few different parts
I will looky for a good pic to show you....
here we go, this one is taken from the top story of our house you can see we have three different sections, but during the heat of summer we noticed bleaching on some of the broms in the mid section of the tunnel so we quickly flung up that green extra protection from the midday heat and sun. Has worked wonders actually. Will take it back down when winter comes round for us

{{gwi:436712}}
in the green section you can see the single extra shadecloth piece and in the cream shadecloth you can see a wide extra shadecloth piece
{{gwi:436715}}

has everyone all read this...LOL
its a thing i found in a brom mag somewhere...LOL
explains us to a T *wink*wink*

It all starts out so innocently! You go to
a nursery or chain store to pick up a few
seedling tomato plants for your garden.
Then you see "It".
More often than not, "It" is an Aechmea
fasciata that strange being that is
both bizarre and beautiful at the same time.
Its silvery banded foliage and huge bright
rose-pink inflorescence peppered with baby
blue flowers is quite unlike any other plant
youd ever seen before. You stop in yourtracks.
You cannot help but stare at it for a
moment. That moment can become one of
those defining moments of a lifetime. The
less curious, but nonetheless wiser among
us simply stare briefly and then move on,
never aware of how closely they had come.
Those with more curiosity than common
sense however, pause long enough to
ask the person behind the counter about
"It". That worthy informs us that "It" is "a
bromel-iad". When pressed further, he advises
us that a bromel-iad is some kind of
cactus or orchid, and that youre only supposed
to put water in the center of the plant
never in the soil, or maybe youre supposed
to "mist it".
Unfortunately, since the Federal Drug
Administration does not yet require a warning
label on bromeliads advising of their
addictive nature, you are blissfully unaware
of the potential hazards to your financial
health. You buy "It", and so begins your
headlong plunge into the murky world of
the bromeliad counterculture.
You will soon find out that, like the potato
chip that advertises, "Bet you cant just
eat one!", Aechmea fasciata usually proves
to be just the first in a long string of bromeliads
encountered over the ensuing
months that simply cant be resisted. The
addiction takes hold rapidly and somewhere
around the third or fourth bromeliad,
you are beyond rehabilitation. You not
only have to more and more bromeliads;
you have to have more and more frequently!
Then, you move on to the harder stuff
the stuff that isnt sold over the counter
at nurseries and discount stores the rare
stuff found only through the mail from
plant pushers in Florida and Southern California.
At first, you have no idea what you
are ordering; the description in the catalogue just sounds interesting! You start
winding up with plants with strange sounding
names like Canistrum and Quesnelia.
However, as you become more sophisticated
you actually know what you want
and what you want is inevitably more expensive.
Your collection will continue to grow
in direct proportion to your decline in social
skills. You will no longer care about how
your favourite sports teams are doing, what
Madonna is up to, or which criminal was
recently let off by a lame-brained jury. The
scales of justice become less significant to
you than the presence of scales on your
Vriesea hieroglyphica. You can now recognize
the difference between several varieties
of Aechmea disticantha, but you can
no longer remember the name of your
youngest child.
Up until now, you have been alone in
your epiphytic affliction. Until now, your
family and friends have regarded you as
becoming increasingly weird, but essentially
harmless. At some point though, you
will eventually encounter another
bromephile, and you will learn there is a
group in your town that meet clandestinely
once a month to talk about nothing but bromeliads.
Thats when the real trouble begins.
Up to that point, bromeliads had
found their way into your home one or two
at a time. You have been limited in your
ability to acquire them by their relative
availability coupled with your financial constraints.
Now, however, you become exposed
to the world of free offsets and inexpensive
plant tables. You carry them home
by the armload!
Your family begins to realize too late
that now you have become part of an organization,
you are no longer harmless, The
windowsills and every nook and cranny ofthe house are saturated with bromeliads and
the word "greenhouse" begins to crop up
more and more frequently in conversations
with your spouse, (as does the word "divorce").
By now also, your spouse has noticed
another strange phenomenon of the bromeliad
counterculture. That is while only
a tiny percentage of the worlds population
even knows what a bromeliad is, there are
more books about them than there are on
world history, politics, and human behavior
combined and you have now embarked
upon the path to own every one of them.
You are beyond redemption and you
can bet your spouse will never send you
out to buy another tomato plant again.
I thought it only fair to warn you.

Haaaaaaaahaaaaahhhhhaaaaaa

See I told ya!

Hi Bromaloonie,
All I can say is "Oh my God"I have never seen such beautiful neos.I think a few of us should make a special trip to come and view them in real life and meet there grower.Amazing.
Do you grow any in the landscape?If you do please post some pics.
Cheers Fran

I am with you bromaloonie. I don't get into the technical talk. I try things until I am happy with the results, Best way for me to learn what doesn't LOL(that lesson book is full)
You are doing a great job growing your broms so carry on and keep posting the stunning results photo's

Oh Fran, how i would love to have them in landscape but i have only been here a year and a bit at this place and have not had the required shade trees for the job, plus with the trees that we do have im to frightened to burn the poor things out in the open just yet
I have planted a few common ones under some small rainforest trees but nothing inviting like yours that I saw
As time goes by and i learn to let go i will chuck some out in the wild woods and make some beautiful gardens definately. Might give my trees one more year i think

Hotdiggitydam, yup, i do try to understand sometimes but there is no way i could repeat the conversation...LOL
just love sitting back and reading and looking at some things to learn a little here and there.

oh and here is a nice pic i took the other day in the centre part of the brom house
{{gwi:436718}}
ohhh and this one
{{gwi:436719}}

Hi Bromaloonie,

I agree with all the other comments...wow...those are very well grown broms you got there! And fantastic pic's too!

Can I ask a question about your shade cloth...why the green section & white sections? Are they different shade %? I assume the green is a lighter shade factor given that your broms bleached out in the section. And do you notice a difference with broms grown under the white & green sections?

Cheers, Andrew.

Howdy Devo thanks heaps for your compliments too*smile*

I think you misunderstood my post saying that the centre section bleached(green)...what i was meaning was at midday sun time down the centre top of the shadehouse(not the green section but the highest point)all along the shadehouse in the cream section and the green section the middle line of brons in the brom house were burning, se we chucked up extra cloth there (50%green was all we had)so the midday to 2 pm sun was not so hot for them

When i first started owning broms I only had 50% green shadecloth and i got some serious bleaching with our summer hot sun
we moved house (where we are now)and they went under dark trees and all broms turned green while we were preparing and waiting for finances to build this bigger one.
When shopping for the new shadecloth beforehand i was told that getting the cream would bring out more colour in the broms because of less shadow points and just much more light without the burn
I was weary and frightened but DID want them to be more colourful and see the best light they could
in being weary i got some white cloth and some green (which was the first 2 parts of theshadehouse being the cream and then the attatching green.)
it was all experiment really and i was noticing that the cream cloth was giving me better resluts with colour and form of the neos, so that was my decision made when getting the last part of the brom house built , i would definately buy the cream cloth and keep the green cloth in the middle for the neos who needed low light and the vriesias and stuff like that
we had a winter with the green at other place and this is where broms loose colour but with the cream cloth during winter they continue to grow well and keep good colour, there is never any long stretched leaves in my broms anymore
BOTH cloths are 70% but the cream does bleach a little more then the green i do believe...but that would be only slight, only during a very very hot time of the year

I do hope you understand my dribble here...LOL and know what im trying to say, anyhow thats my tunnel story...LOL

Germaine

Hey Bromaloonie!

Those colors are very amazing! How did you do that? Simply amazing! I want to have broms like that too! Hahahaha! Very nice indeed!

Red

WOW! WOW! WEE! What a bunch of perfect-looking bromeliads!

Hi Germaine

I am currently using an old shade house that was built for ferns many years ago and subsequently has black shade cloth on the roof which was the recommended thing at the time of building.

I have been considering replacing this for some time but also been in a quandary as to what coloured shade cloth to use.

I think you may have just given me the answer as I look at the wonderful results you are getting with the light coloured cloth.

Thanks for the information, all the best, Nev.

P.S. Has anyone else any advice on shade cloth colour?

Nev The biggest help I can give is. Base your shade cloth on your local growing conditions and what you want to accomplish in your broms(color, confirmation). Even a discussion with a knowledgable shade cloth distributor can be of great help. One color I dont recommend is red...totally not for broms...Aluminet, white, green and even dark grey reflective if more sun protection is needed are all good if suited to your climate and conditions. Consideration to how much sun your greenhouse recieves all day is a good place to start coupled with your hottest temps you deal with in summer.

Yes Yes Yes, it is very important as to what your own temps are locally.
If given the chance once again i would then go possibly 85% if it were available, then i know i would have complete protection during the hot summer months and still have high light during the winter months to keep good colour
I have NO trees around me during the morning or afternoon so im out there nakid in the open so i need protection

and then again it depends on the kind of brom your growing too?some dont like that high light do they!!!So im really glad i have my green cloth in there

You know I can feel the difference in temps and heat and humidity when walking from one colour to the other, its amazing but yep it is true!!!!!!
I grow Neos most and do adore them the most so i will stay with the cream when i extent my tunnel width ways and still slip in a section of green also for more room of the lower light broms and neos

In a few weeks my hubby and I will be going to stay at a ladies place for the weekend to help set up her tunnel
she currently has about 4 little piddly green shadehouses that see no light because they are buried under rainforest canopy (are black with mould)and only recieve a few hours of raw sun per day(in the heat of the day)
So she wants what we have and changing from green to cream but in her situation we will be choosing a less % cloth because she needs more rays, going to sus out the situation this weekend to make decisions on required materials
Any how she only live an hours drive away but her condtions are totally different to mine
In result she is growing dark green long and lanky broms with NO colour in her green/black shadehouses

Hey! How come the Aussies have all the good stuff? I mean, those plants are (as we say in SoCal) bichin! I say us Yanks should unite and send raiding parties over there and lay claim to all, looting and pillaging collections until our ship's holds are full of...of...aw....never mind, long day at work.