Thanks for the advice hotdiggetydam. My local Lowes does have a nice garden center, with a good selection of houseplants. I'd love to stumble across something interesting there. But I was actually thinking of ordering online. If I go with that general rule of replacing broms every year, well, I guess that means I could order whatever catches my eye. And then of course I would try to make it happy so that it would stick around longer than that. I do use pebble trays, but there's only so much you can do inside. I suppose I could take them outside during the summer. The humidity here is thick enough to cut with a knife. I don't really like to do that for various reasons. So you wouldn't have a problem repotting a mature plant? I ask because I don't like the pottimg medium that my Aechmeas are in. It looks like straight peat moss to me. A longer cut than what you usually find in bagged mixes, but peat moss nonetheless. I'm not a fan of peat moss in my plant pots. There is no salt buildup, but I would like to repot them in something with better drainage. I've been struggling with the decision to do it (later in the year) or to just leave it alone and continue to be extra careful with watering the pots. I'm not a chronic overwaterer, but it is so much easier when you have a free draining potting mix. I guess I'm nervous about repotting because I've never repotted this kind of plant before. I don't really know what the root system is like, and how finicky the plants are about the process. Some plants never skip a beat, while others pout for weeks. I don't want to harm my beautiful Aechmeas. They seem to be doing very well for me.

Hi everyone, pj - In Australia where I live, most of the commercially grown Guzmanias are grown just for the flower trade. You can take them inside the house and enjoy them instead of a bunch of flowers and they will last for about three months. When they're finished flowering I just cut off the old flower spike and put the plant out in the garden in a shady area free of wind. I find that they usually produce offsets (commonly called pups) which will flower when they mature. If you like, when these offsets are 1/2 as big as the mother plant, they can be removed and planted in a pot of their own and eventually they will flower and the process starts all over again. The following is a short article I wrote about my experiences growing Guzmanias on the South East Coast of Australia. I apologise for taking up so much space but I don't know any other way of posting it other than "cut and past" ~ HOW I IMPROVED MY GUZMANIAS ~ Neville Wood - 2009 Up until recently I had about six or more Guzmanias in my shade house which I had accumulated over a few years having previously purchased them in flower at markets. I really never saw myself as a Guzmania grower, but thought of them more as a substitute for a bunch of flowers to brighten up the inside of the home. When you consider that a reasonable bunch of flowers costs a minimum of $30 these days, and any I've ever bought seldom lasted more than a week; a flowering Guzmania which could be bought for around $20 and often lasted in flower for 2-3 months was a much better financial proposition, don't you think? After they had finished flowering and the old inflorescence was removed, they were relegated to an unused corner of the shade-house and allowed to just do "their own thing", as I really didn't have much interest in them as a plant. They were never fed and only watered when I watered the other brom's. They continued to grow and occasionally would put up a pretty ordinary looking inflorescence which was never anywhere near as spectacular as the one on the original plant had been. I simply put this down to a couple of things, either I just couldn't grow them or my conditions didn't suit them or maybe it was a combination of both. A couple of years back I read an article in (I think) a back issue of a BSI journal. It was by a Guzmania grower in the US and gave details of his methods of culture and included a picture of him standing up to his waist in the centre of a group of beautiful flowering Guzmanias. These beautiful plants were the best looking Guzmanias I had ever seen with their healthy green leaves and beautiful large inflorescences. What he said was basically, never let them dry out completely, grow them in lower light to Neo's, Aechmeas etc, give them a warm environment with good air circulation, and the bit that really caught my attention, FEED THEM AS OFTEN AS YOU FEED YOURSELF! This man only grew Guzmanias and was known by local growers as somewhat of an expert with a nickname of "Mr. Guzmania". Until I read that article I treated my few Guzmanias in a similar manner to my Neo's. The plants never really looked "happy" and I only ever got the occasional inflorescence of average quality. My success was such that I threatened to toss the plants out if they didn't perform better the following year. The plants were moved to another area on the southern, shadier side of our house beneath 75% green shade cloth. This area is in a higher part of the yard and is protected from winds by the house on the north side and re-cycled charcoal coloured Laser Light on the walls of the other three sides. Because it is so protected from the elements and is a bit higher than their previous location it also appears to be slightly warmer in the cold weather. After being moved to their new location, all were re-potted using a mix of six parts of Brunnings Cymbidium Orchid Mix to one part of fine Coco Peat. During re-potting when the pot was about 3/4 full of mix, I added Osmocote at the rate of 1 level teaspoon to a 5" pot, plus some Blood and Bone at the same rate, making sure the fertilizers didn't directly contact any part of the plants. Sufficient mix was then added to come up almost to the top of the pot and they were then thoroughly watered until the water flowed from the bottom of the pot. I foliar fed these plants each two weeks, alternating between Manutec and Phostrogen right throughout the whole year along with a monthly application of Seasol. The results were amazing; the plants picked up and grew beautifully and this year I had a better show of flowers than I could have ever imagined. There's only two things which could have caused such a dramatic improvement; and that was the new location with extra fertilizer or the threat to "bin them" if they didn't perform better. As I don't think the Guzmanias heard the threat "to bin them", I think it had to be the change of location and the increase in feeding. I hope this helps in some way All the best, Nev.

Hi everyone - In view of what’s been said about “store-bought plants” as opposed to plants bought from specialist nurseries and private growers, I’d like to share what I have found here where I live in Australia with plants I have purchased from large department like stores such as K-Mart, Big W and Bunnings. I have found that suppliers of plants to these retailers for "on-selling" are usually professional bromeliad nurseries who obtain their stock as tissue cultured plants in flasks and import them from various overseas companies. Without going into the technicalities of “tissue culture” I’ll just say it’s a specialist field where plants are (for want of a better word) mass produced from a tiny piece of tissue taken from the parent plant. Any plants produced from this tissue (in theory) should all be identical to the original parent. (This is usually the case with the original plant purchased, but after then, the subsequent pups produced seem to go astray and do strange things). These plantlets are taken from the flasks and grown on in various steps so they become acclimatised to their new growing medium and conditions. They are force fed to make them grow quickly and when they are near flowering size they are treated with a chemical to make them flower prematurely and all at the same time so that flowering corresponds with special occasions such as Mother’s Day, Christmas time or other occasions where gifts are given. I personally have had very mixed and unsuccessful results with tissue cultured plants (or should I say) with the pups produced from them. If I buy a plant already in flower, there isn’t a problem because what you buy is what you see, “a plant in flower”. (We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the object of producing these tissue cultured plants in the first place is to take the place of a bunch of cut flowers with the idea being, when they have finished flowering, they are tossed out and another flowering plant purchase to take their place). I have sometimes found that plants bought “in spike” but yet to flower, sometimes produce deformed inflorescences and flowers. I have also found that the pups are often produced more productively than usual; for example where a plant would normally produce just the one pup, these plants often produce multiple pups. I have also found that these pups will grow well and reach maturity in the usual time frame or even faster, but rarely flower in the first generation. I had one plant (an Ae. fasciata hybrid called ‘Morgana’) which over the course of a couple of years produced in excess of twenty pups and even six years on, none had flowered but just kept producing more pups of their own with the same result; eventually they were all “binned”. My theory is that somewhere during this production process, factors arising from the tissue culturing combined with the forced growth and flowering, everything within the plant’s genetic makeup becomes “muddled up” and the genes of the plant are so confused they don’t work as they do normally. What is it they say, if you mess with “Mother Nature”, she will surely bite you on the bum. I can honestly say that with approximately twenty of these tissue cultured plants of various genera I have purchased over a period of a few years, I have yet to get a pup that behaves the way a normal pup should with the main problem being they just won’t flower initially and it’s not until I’m on plants grown from the second or even third generation of pups, that flowering sometimes commences normally. To sum up; I think we shouldn't forget that the aim behind the production of this type of mass produced “store bought plant”, is to provide an alternative to cut flowers and not a “cheap” reproduction of a “special” and possibly very expensive plant. This too is possibly the reason why these plants aren’t named; retailers don’t name the flowers you buy in a bunch so why name a plant which is just a substitution for a bunch of flowers? All the best, Nev.

Hi everyone. Carol - It seems like the big chain stores and some nurseries (here in Australia and possibly in your country as well) are following the trend in Europe as far as flowering bromeliads go. When you see brom plants (Often large numbers of identical plants all in flower at the same time) this should ring the "warning bells" as these are very likely all tissue cultured plants (mass produced in their thousands) exclusively grown for the flowers. and as an alternative to buying a bunch of "cut flowers". Just like they do in European countries, they sell well because they are often cheaper than a bunch of cut flowers, last much, much longer and are a much better financial proposition. The thing to remember is these plants are just intended to be grown for the flowers and not grown on after they finish flowering. In fact in European countries most of these are binned when the flowers finish and a new flowering plant is purchased. The down side is that generally speaking (Here in Australia at least) they have been force fed to grow quickly and on reaching a mature size they are then either chemically treated or gassed to induce flowering. This is why we see large numbers of identical plants all in flower at the same time. The other annoying thing is that they are rarely named except for a generic name e.g. "Bromeliad", and some "one suits all" type of instruction on all plant name tags, Guzmanias, Vrieseas and Aechmeas alike. These instructions are intended to keep the plant healthy to prolong flowering. There is nothing illegal about this, but if you want to buy brom's to grow on and not just specifically for the flowers you are better getting a plant or pup from a grower or a nursery who deals in these types of broms. In my experience; another down side to the mass produced plants you buy in flower is that when the flowers finish, they will often produce many pups which will grow into nice healthy plants but are very hard to flower or in some cases won't flower at all. I believe the reason for this is that these plants have had all unnatural things applied to them (Tissue cultured, force fed and gassed) which has upset the internal growing and reproduction mechanism of the plant and in my experience it's not until the second generation of pups that things start to return to normal and I have eventually obtained flower. In my early days of brom growing I once bought an Ae fasciata in full flower and even though I already had this plant, the one I bought had an enormous flower almost twice the size of my other plant. I later found out it was Ae 'Morgana" a cultivated variety of Ae. fasciata, See: http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=AECHMEA&id=378#378 The flowers were extremely long lived and when it finished flowering it started producing pups and I removed at least ten over a six month period, It just pupped and pupped. The thing is these pups all matured into lovely healthy plants but all were reluctant to flower and I ended binning the lot except one which I kept and which still has not flowered even though it's now about four years since it reached maturity. So there you have what I have learned from buying these flowering plants from large chain stores. I can only speak for my plants grown here in Australia and things may be different in your country. All the best, Nev.