You have a true paradise, Fred. Keep those pictures coming for I so enjoy them.

Hap

@ Fred...Try using Sevin (powder form)...or even Boric Acid. Lay a circle of the powder around the ant hole so they track it when they go down into the ground. Unwittingly they will track it back to the nest...and...kill the colony. When I get aphid investations on my citrus it's due to ants living in the soil around the trunk and I have gotten rid of the nests by doing as I mentioned..... After a while...no more problem!

I use orthene which is 50% acephate (whatever that is) but it's a white pouder by Ortho for fireant destruction. It works but then they just pop up somewhere else. I must have 20 or 30 ant mounts out there. They search out any dry spot and up comes a mound. I dodn't think there is a way to permanently get rid of ants. They own the world and there are many more of them then us.

Today I broke a lot of pups of my older broms and replanted them in the mother plant vicinity for a more massive look. Eventually I'd like to have wall to wall coverage.

so I worked up a new bed today. I use a very rough mulch which contains lots of pieces of wood from branches and chips mixed up with dirt. I buy it for $15/yd and use it to build up my brom beds. They seem to love the loose woody mess I plant them in. I'm just spreading the pups around.

These are Billbergia pyramidalis and tomorrow I will continue to expand the bed to the left side of the tree. It's a lot of work and costs my a bit of sweat.

Here's a shot of the planting material I use topped with Starbucks coffee grounds. Neo. marmorata var. and Neo. Fireball 'Donger' in the picture

Those are beautiful, fred! They seem to like the medium.

everyone's broms are sooo nice! I wish they were easier to find here in Canada (or easier to import) I only have around 10, would have so many more if I could

Building another brom bed right by my front door. If anybody is interested in the names I could ID these

Yeah, I know. Nobody cared about the names of some of these broms. Well, I'm going to list them here anyhow. So there. :-)

Neo. johannis 'De Rolf'


Neo. 'Big Bopper'

Got to keep bromeliads alive on ATP.

Some scenery I just shot in the garden:


a quiet corner with some Billbergia pyramidalis, Neo. cruenta 'Sun King' and other neoregelias w/closeup of the billbergia



I've started to put some of my approx 200 varieties in the DB but there is not even a place to enter how to use these plants except to pot them. You'd think there would be a landscaping option available.
Fred

You're doing a good job, Fred!!
Sorry about your ant problem. I have no recommendation. Maybe they like your lovely mulch too much.

Lovely broms

Hetty, the mulch is heaven on earth for all kinds of critters. I just took a brom out of a pot of the stuff and it was full of little white worms of some kind. I guess they are all working on converting the mulch back to nothing. The ants are everywwhere. Just cut all the dead branches and leaves out of my screw pine palm and it was full of animal life up there. Ants, frogs, bees you name it. I sealed the cuts where I cut the frozen branches off. Maybe some new growth will emerge next year. That is if we have a warm winter.

The broms seem to like the mulch regardless of the other life forms.

Bring on those names, Fred! I'm about due for a nursery run to a place that has quite a few Broms. , and I have a spot they like, so I may buy a couple.

Beautiful plants and garden Fred! And I agree, bring on those names, I like to know what I'm looking at

Your broms are inspiring! I have a few, but all no names. I will have to take some pictures tomorrow and maybe find out a little more about them from you. I had thought that they were not so interested in the soil they were in, clearly I'm wrong. I probably need to get a few tiny new ones out of the bark and into dirt.

I took some pictures today and I have to admit I don't even know for sure that these are bromeliads, I think they are. If you know anything about them I hope you'll tell me.

These are 2 small pups that a friend gave me. I have them in bark in a coconut shell because they are so small I hate to put them in the ground. I am having a big problem with slugs lately and don't want to put out poison that my cats might get into.

This is one that has thrown a lot of pups. I have one in a hanging coconut shell next to the mother plant. They have a kind of leopard spotting.





and yet another in the ground that has avoided the slugs.

This is the one I'm not even sure is a bromeliad. It's suffered a lot from the slugs, I go out at night and catch them and it seems to be coming back with new leaves.

extranjera said:This is the one I'm not even sure is a bromeliad. It's suffered a lot from the slugs, I go out at night and catch them and it seems to be coming back with new leaves.

I haven't the faintest idea as to what this is but it is not a bromeliad