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wantonamara

Repotting monster bromeliad in heatwave

I think this is a Bilbergia windii. If it is not PLEASE correct me.I am not an expert and this was given to me as a passalong from a generational passalong from a long ago neighbor's family.. This picture was taken maybe three years ago and it is much bigger and going to break the pot (styrofoam planter). It is at 100º today and will be higher tomorrow and no releif in sight. It might be this way and worse till September. I am wanting to repot and cut this monster into smaller peices to pass it along. Should I be over concerned about the temperatures that I am getting here in Texas? I will probably have to strap the plant's top to a tree and pray that I can pull or winch the bottom off without resorting to cutting the pot into two. What are your thoughts. It does not kill easy. I am 69Yrs old and this bugger is getting too bigg to get my arms around it to move it.





Comments (13)

  • 4 years ago

    Wait until it cools down.

  • 4 years ago

    It is cooling down from 100º to low 90's and upper 80's next week.

  • 4 years ago

    I've never seen this dangling before. Interesting. I water mine by filling the cups. IDK what I would do with this.

  • 4 years ago
    last modified: 4 years ago

    Well we have cooled down to 95 and it will be even cooler this week so I am diving in. I tied it to a tree and still could not get the styrofoam pot out so out came the sawsall. God bless styrofoam. I used to stick my nose up at it as tacky but it gives some cold protection, It is light ( a good thing for a plant this large). I have had this pot for about 20 years. I repoted this plant many times. It makes babies prolifically. I finally cut the pot off. The roots had grabbed the surface but I was able to crobar the fragmnts off. I have heavy clay pots and I think I need light pot for this . Come our coldfronts , I need to transport it. I also need to lift it up to a perch because of the flowers. Too bad these styrofoam pots are only available at auctions now as far as I can tell from a quick google.

    I just shoot the hose at it to water it. It is somewhat terestial and not picky. I use a bark filled medium that I mix up. Those flowers are a good 2 feet..

  • 4 years ago

    Fantastic! Do you leave this outside all year?

  • 4 years ago

    I am west of Austin in the hills so it does have to go inside for the freezes here. I am zone 8a/b. I put it and my Epiphylum oxipetullum on a wheeled garden table and wheel them into the husbands shop for a couple of days untill the freeze ends. They are mostly outside. When we had that 2 week ices storm and 3º, I wheeled it into the house. This is why I have to keep it limited to a 5 gallon put.


    Heres a picture of my growing HEARD of plants.



  • 4 years ago

    Beautiful! That is definitely a herd. What a great walkway/deck too!


    I have some in the ground that get frost bite on the leaf tips but seem to survive otherwise, and some in pots that go in a shed for winter, and some under a mini garden that have, so far, stayed evergreen. It frosts here about half of the time from mid-Dec. to about March 1. Too much to shuffle plants in/out. Interesting to compare subtle differences in the same zone.


    Do you have any other ones? I also have B. nutans and 'Foster's Striate' that have about the same results in various spots. I've quit putting them under trees though because most of my trees are deciduous.

  • 4 years ago
    last modified: 4 years ago

    I have a B. nutans. I have left them out and killed Bibergia nutans more than once. I guess I have extra to try the upturned pot routine But with the dangle , these guys need to be in a tree or a raised pot. We have gotten down to 5) 2 years ago but normally it is 19º - 15º. It has been colder lately around 13º.

    The walkway goes from 3 steps above grade to 11' above. We built it out of recycled bar joist. A great place to watch the moon and lightening storms.

  • 4 years ago

    Fascinating! How do you get them to dangle?


    If/when we get temps like that, a lot of my marginally hardy plants will be toast.

  • 4 years ago
    last modified: 4 years ago

    Our winters are bipolar. It will be with lows in the 40's and a few upper 30's and mostly an occasional very gentle 31º freeze and then WHAM., 3 days of killing frost. A normal winter is three winters of 3 days each. The winter of the huge icestorm/snow storm and 3º had only 2 31 nights before it. I had tomatoes till a week before that WHAM. None of the plants had hardened off. Many native trees and shrubs died. We won't even talk about the landscaping.

    Dangling is what this variety does by nature. I just put it on a raised spot and water.

  • 4 years ago

    So far the repoted plants have not blinked.

  • 4 years ago
    last modified: 4 years ago

    I looked on ebay and you're right, they're asking a lot for them but none of them are as pretty as yours because of the hot pink blooms. They were all lighter pink on ebay.

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