I saw the same thing at Lowes last week. I bought a couple of the normal boxed bulbs for $3.98. I also bought some loose bulbs at a better local garden center, Minerva,Elvas, Pink Blossom. I got one Minerva bulb that is HUGE (to me), the size of a large grape fruit! I toss those hole-less cheap plastic pots out as well as the puck of soil and use clay pots and a 50/50 mix of good potting soil and perlite. For now I have them potted and in the dark. I do have a few started.

Tom

I prefer buying bulbs from catalogs because walmart's amaryllis are small, and the roots are usually cut off, the bulb should have thick white roots, if not, it will grow and bloom and feed from the bulb, then die. Make sure the bolb has at least a couple white roots alive that is where roots sprout from. Park Seed is a good company, as well as John Scheepers bulbs, both sell great items and I think have a guarantee attached.

I forgot to bring the names with me. The Walmart in Galveston has some really nice packaged rare bulbs for $6.97 each. Big heavy bulbs with good roots. When my brain wakes up I'll post the names.
Tally HO!

That's good news. I checked at our Walmart this morning and there are no Amaryllis in stock, yet.

The last couple of years, the varieties have been limited except for at Home Depot where they have stocked a couple of varieties that were not available at the other stores.

Please do let us know what is in stock at yours!

Thanks!

thanks for the Walmart tip. the one near me has nothing but it seems different Walmarts do carry different stock at different times so I'll check others.

Hi Folks, new member. I have always liked the beautiful flowers of the amaryllis and found this forum.Getting ready to retire and am looking forward to getting back to some of my hobbies like gardening. Seems to be lots of good info here.For those looking for bulbs go to,www.tytyga.com/category/Amaryllis+Bulbs. They seem to have a good selection and are reasonably priced. Infact found both you and them today looking for bulbs. Enjoy

taras,
and everyone who is interested in buying good quality, pure bred amaryllis, I really talk you out of ordering anything from tytyga.com. Their other name is Aaron's Canna. They have two web sites set up with slightly different plants and prices. Be careful with them. Below, you can read my experiences with them.
I ordered 10 bulbs froim Aaron's Canna last January. I have a very bad opinion of them. They sent the package to me very damp and the bulbs were SMALL. So small that only like three of them flowered, and even those were not the varieties I ordered. I am very angry with them, and I will
never order from them again. Not to mention that the varieties they propagate are copyrighted in South Africa and the Netherlands, so they are probably propagating illegally.. And the quality of the bulbs were shocking...
They were not willing to ship to me to California, so I had to have them send the package to Florida to a relative, who resent the package to me...
If I had had been in Florida, I would have turned the package back to them.
But now I just lick my wounds after I learned my lesson. If you want to order from them, I will not talk you out of it, but I will definitely avoid them for sure. Not to mention that my package arrived to Florida with my payment information glued to the top of it. All the credit card information, address, security code, everything on the top for everyone to see.
Furthermore, most of the pictures they have of the varieties on their web page are not the actual cultivar. They supposedly grow these flowers and they cannot take pictures of them when they are in bloom? What a crook
company.
Some of the bulbs I received from them are still not big enough to flower, so you can imagine how small bulblets I got... You can imagine, if I give you a measuring point: You know how big a tulip bulb... Imagine that or just slightly bigger...
I am doing a disservice to them to tell this, but I don't mind, because my experiences are real with them. I will have to rebuy all the varieties I obtained from them, because they are all "mutts." At least all of the ones that bloomed.
Someone should hug me!

I have read really bad reviews about that company too in other forums. Again, it won't hurt to check out the company in Garden Watchdog before you order from them. Sorry to hear about your order soultan.

well i checked a couple walmarts and they did have $2.99 bare bulbs in a box. they were just a tad smaller than a tennis ball and all of them were minervas. i like minveras by the way but i have a bunch of 'em already. i may be tempted though to grab a few.

Soultan,

I really wish you had seen my recent posts regarding these crooks. Every year, there is a post about where to get the bulbs and I post a diatribe about these slimy thieves. NEVER order from them EVER! Someone said that in person, where you can actually see the stock, they play nice, but everyone who is a mail order customer is fair game.

Plant_Guy

Here is a link that might be useful: My Amaryllis Page

I just received my order from McClure & Zimmerman. What a pleasant surprise. I wish they had more varieties, so I could place another order. But I have all the oter kinds they offer. Huge, healthy bulbs, nice packaging. I am ready to examine them more thoroughly, then plant some, and store the rest in my wine cooler. This was a good day.

Here is a link that might be useful: McClure & Zimmerman

Charisma, exotic star, pink accent and sumatra were at our Walmart in Galveston. They are nice big bulbs, very healthy roots, several even have daughters! They were in boxes hanging on the endcap, you know the kind you pull the merchandise out of the bottom? I got them potted up this week. They had red lion, minerva & another in bulk for around $3.00 each. They make good filler plants here.
Tally HO!

Galveston where?
I keep going to Wal Mart here in California, and no smell of Amaryllis anywhere.

Last year, after Christmas I was rummaging around HD and where they have their spring bulbs (daffodills, narcissus, crocus, etc) in nylon mesh bags, I found more vaireties than just the box stardards apple blossom, red lion and minerva. I got a lovely unnamed coral flowered plant and a picotee theyre were others, I just don't remember their names. This year I am going to check before they get all picked over. I think I got these bulbs for like $1.00 each.

Our HD also has those generic labeled bulbs, like "Red and White Striped". I may never know for sure what the actual name of those are, but they will look mighty fine in by garden, and the price was right.

Picotee did turn out to be Picotee. And some were labeled 'Apple Blossom'. Most likely, they were. Some were simply labeled 'Pink', and they were also beautiful and will look good in my garden.

I end up labeling them as HD Pink '05 or whatever because I will never know for sure...

Galveston is most likely Galveston, TX which is close to Houston and paradise!

Hello,

I'm from Montreal and just bought SYDNEY, white with red stripes. Thanks for all the help, especially one of the pages I found attached.

Nancy

One of my favorite times of year! I've gone wild already. So far this (early) season, I have Dazzler, Bianca (aka Green Goddess), Exotica, Exotic Star, Sumatra, Picotee, Vera, Toronto, Queen of Hearts, Pink Accent, Cherry Nymph, Red Charm and Vienna.

These plants are a god send for me and keep me going through our long Maine winters.

I hope they are all accurately named, last year I had too many bulbs that weren't what I bought them as..

kniphofia that happened to me too last year. My Exotica turned out to be Lemon-Lime. The doubles thread really got to me and after seeing my Elvas bloom last year, I had to have more.
I'm really looking forward to everyone's pictures.

Kniph~

I am looking forward to seeing *your* always beautiful pictures too! I don't know which you do better, grow pretty Hippis or photograph them!

Robert.

i broke down and got a couple apple blossoms from lowes. ugghh... and i'm trying to decrease my collection. they were smallish bulbs too but i never had those before. also i went to smith & hawkens at the mall and wow, they were fully stocked with huge bulbs at $14 in black pearl, dancing queen, red nymph, white nymph, white christmas and even minerva. i picked up a couple white nymphs.

For some reason, Wal Mart doesn't have amaryllis bulbs in my area. I don't expect them to have more varieties than I have already, but since everybody is talking about getting some bulbs from there, I check out the local Wal Mart every Sunday and find nothing.

Yep, Galveston, TX. And the Walmart in Texas City had them too.
After blooming I stick them all somewhere in the garden so not too worried about colors, I don't have a scheme in the garden, just put plants where the weeds grow!
I too have no will power when find bulbs on clearance or cheap. I at least have enough sense NOT to buy tulips or bearded iris or most daffs as they won't grow here.
Got Red lion bulbs in a trade and they are already blooming! The ones in the garden are really just sprouting foliage.
Tally HO!

Now Galveston TX and Texas City are too far for me to go there and check out the selection. :o) I will just stick to this store every Sunday. Eventually I will give up. Probably in December. I have too many bulbs anyway. They are presenting all sorts of problems. And now havint the problem with this ebayer, I lost my good spirits a little.

Target now has "Smith and Hawkens" branded bulbs in ceramic pots for $8.99 in common red lion, minerva and white. These are nice medium tennis size bulbs but not as large as the $14 ones they have at the Smith and Hawkens boutique stores in malls.

All of our local Grocery stores has them now. Theyve had them since around halloween.

Wholefoods has nice potted ones in clay pots for 12 bucks. Most of them have two bloom spikes on them. I meant to pick up a couple, but I didnt, and when I went in there today they only had two left. They all appeard to be very healhty plants.

Same w/ the Harriss Teeter stores, but thier price varies from store to store. Ive seen them for 12 bucks, and for 20 bucks at thier brand new Alexandria / Foxchase store.

Giant has the boxed "kits", for 7 bucks each. I decided to pick up a couple of t hose. They are in actually NICE plastic pots, with holes, and a saucer to catch water run off, and are potted in SOIL.

I picked up an "Amigo" which is a deep, bright solid red, and a "Star Of Holland" which is the same color red, with white stripes down the center of each petal that kind of form a star in the middle of the bloom. These are from a company called "Garden State Bulbs" located in Vineland, NJ.

Both bulbs I got are already showing tips of leaves and the bloom spikes. They say on the box that you are "Garanteed to get 6 flowers or more" out of each bulb. I guess we will find out. I havent done these in a few years. I had one that lasted for about 5 years, and bloomed every year, but It got lost in a move. Hopefully these will last me. Well see! I LOVE them though, they have become my favorite bulb flower.

The Smith and Hawken in Georgetown (Washington DC) has TONS of them, both potted, and loose bulbs. Half of thier loose bulbs were to the point of blooming just laying in the cart. They all looked good though.

I wanted to go to Smith & Hawkens today, but drove out too late. They closed at 5. I am going there tomorrow. I called them. I hope they have Magic Green. Though I expect the bulbs to be pricey... About 14 a piece or so.
I am running out of stores here that still might have varieties I don't, so I will soon give up and not go to garden centers till next october again (for the purpose of buying bulbs.)
The Amaryllis season is slowly winding down. This has become a Christmas flower and most of the varieties must be planted by now to flower around Christmas.
This is a pic of my Milady.
{{gwi:428655}}

Hi Novaplantguy! You are so lucky you live in that part of Virginia. I'm in the southwestern part where TN,KY and VA meet. We have NOTHING out here except for the usual Appleblossom, Minerva and Dazzler boxed kits of Walmart. I went there today though to get a turkey and decided to take a peak at the "used to be garden section" which is now full of X'mas stuff. They had one stand of blooming cacti and poinsettias. At the far end though, I saw a new case of Amaryllises, same boxed kits but they were Royal Velvet for $7.98. They were like 24-26cm big bulbs with decent white roots...not bad! I swear those Royal Velvets just jumped into my cart and sat snuggly with that turkey. Wishing you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Hi Mariva7!

Lucky, well, Ok I guess. I mean I love this area and all, but its so incredibly expensive! UGH! My dollar goes twice as far in Richmond than it does up here. But I do love it up here though. DC Is my hometown, and i like Northern VA alot, espeically close in. I live in Old Town Alexandria. Nice area, and very close to everything, with the subway right outside my door pretty much.

So I now have 3 bulbs. The two I mentioned above, and one I picked up at my work. ( I work for a high end florist in downtown Washington DC ) and the one I got from work does not have a name label. It just says " DK RED" and thats it. It was about a foot high when I brought it home last week, its now close to 2 feet, and its busted open. The other spike is still only about 1 foot tall. One bloom has now gone completely side ways and has filled out almost completely to its full color and is just now starting to open. Its a BEAUTIFUL DEEP RED WINE color!

My other two are coming up a bit, but still have a long way to go. I think they are all staggered enough that I should have blooms for a month and a half or so.

Well see how it goes! I hope my two boxed kit ones also produce two bloom spikes!

Hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving holiday and get to enjoy thier Amaryllis for a long time this cold winter.

Charisma & Exotic star are both blooming!! And they are what they are supposed to be! The others all have buds and lots of leaves.
Tally HO!

Hi.

You won't find info about Aarons bulbs and Ty Ty Gardens which is one in the same on Dave's Garden Watch dog anymore. They have about 20 more plant business names, so watch out. Dave's Garden Watch dog, lets you post reviews about your experience with garden nurseries. At one time they had reviews posted about the two above nurseries, into the several hundreds, most all of it bad.
I spent two whole hours reading them one night on Dave's Garden watchdog. Some of the posts were kind of semi hilarious about people ordering supposedly full trees for a relatives Birthday and getting a stick in a green bag sent to them.
Then the person who ordered a supposedly full, already bearing dwarf lemon tree, and shopped for hours for just the right cobalt blue planter she had envisioned it being planted in.
Only to get a bare stick sent to her too.
She said she now has a stick growing in the prettiest planter you'd ever want to see.
Others were actually very sad. Like the lady who thought she and her husband were fulfilling their dream of having an apple orchard on their new land they had saved to buy. Saved up for the money to buy the trees too. They ordered a couple hundred "supposedly" already bearing little apple trees(as per the advertisement, photos and description, etc, Ty Ty gardens had online.)
She and her husband paid in advance and rented a huge trailer to pull behind their pickup truck to go pick them up. About a 100 mile trip. Only to be shocked and speechless when they got there, to be handed two pails with about 200 bare, 3' tall sticks in them. That fit in the back seat of their pickup.
The woman said she cried all the way home and her husband just sat stony faced as they drove home.
I think I'd be saying. I wanted my money back or someone was getting knuckle sandwich. There would be no pulling out of the nursery and driving home.
They'd have to call the police to have my husband removed from the premises.
Needless to say, for some reason they accepted them and planted them, only to have all but a few dozen die on them . They lost a big chunk of money and had no more $$ left to buy more trees to replace the ones they had lost.
The guy who owned Ty Ty's nursery and Aarons bulbs supposedly knew it was hurting his business, for all these people to be posting about the horrendous rip offs on Dave's Garden as a lot of people check out garden watch dog before buying. I heard he threatened Dave's Garden with a lawsuit if he didn't remove the bad feedback. So, they did. Too bad, because they're still ripping people off from what I hear.
Some people posted about when they called the company to complain, they were hung up on and some even cursed at.
You just have to be careful that the nursery you're thinking of buying from, isn't affiliated with them.

I had very bad experiences with them too.
I ordered 10 Amaryllis bulbs from them and I got like golf ball sized bulbs in closed plastic bags, so the bulbs were suffocating. Three of them brought flowers. Picotee was a mutt and I don't even remember the others. So I got bulbs from them. 10 of them. But it seems like they are not true to name. Not to mention that I am still waitint for some of them to bloom for me for the second year. Though, I guess, I will still have to wait another year till they get blooming size. Lilac is still too small to flower. I planted it. It is bringing leaves, but no stalk, so I must assume, it is still not blooming size. And when it will finally bloom, it will turn out the same white flower with red stripes on it as Picotee did. I don't expect these bulbs to perform true for me, so I just keep them as mutts and nurture them hopefully better than Aaron - TyTy did.
I also never got my money back for the small and fake bulbs. When they sent the package, they printed my name, address, credit card number, security code, date of expiration and my date of birth ON TOP OF THE PACKAGE.
No way I will ever order from them again.

Tears flooded my eyes as I read the story about the couple that had saved up for their dream, only to be ripped off!

Soultan, I am so very, very sorry! If they had put all that information on top of a package, and visible, I would have been seeking a friendly lawyer. I'm not the type to sue someone, but in that case, I would have!

It's no wonder that they have to keep finding new names for their company. It's like a bandit on the run!!!

So sad...

Elizabeth,

There were actually some experiences posted that were even sadder then that. That's why I sat for two hours reading them. I read some to my college aged daughter and she said, "What kind of rip off place is that"?
Then she went to their website and laughed at the faked photos. Said it looked like some pre- teens entering puberty put the webpage up.
No, even they could probably do better then that.
Some of the posts about them were dated from 1999 clear up till last summer when Dave's Garden was forced to remove the feedback.
That's a crime that they have been allowed to rip people off like this for so many year.
Three were also a huge amount of complaints posted about bulbs, especially Amaryllis not being true to name. Just being "mutts" like soultan said hers were.
So, no wonder some of their bulbs are cheap. I could go in my garden and dig up a little scrawny no name and put a fancy name on it and sell it. But, I would never do that.
I have a higher authority I'll have to report to some day.

Soultan,
Sorry to hear you have to re-buy the varieties you thought you were getting.
Now, when I but mail-order my son takes pictures of the bulbs with name tag right after we get them home and then I watch to see if they bloom true.
I know some nurseries do get them mixed up. With Ty Ty, I think they don't even know what half of them are themselves.
With them I think it's a case of " Dig up a mutt from your yard and put a fancy name on it and sell it". Let the poor unsuspecting buyer find out later when it blooms and they get a shock.
Now about your credit card and other info being displayed for anyone who got close enough to the package to read it. They know better then that and I'd file a complaint with someone. Consumer affairs. report it to your credit card company and ask what should you do. Numerous people would have seen the info, from mail handlers to mail carrier.
With that info alone they could place credit card orders over the phone. It happened to us once.
Did you save the package with the info on the outside?
I wouldn't even WANT TyTy's to have my credit card number on file. If they rip that many people off. Plus they could leave all the important info just lying around, or throw it out in their trash cans for garbage pick up.
Excuse the rant.
Cheryl

This happened to me last January. I am over it already, but whenever someone is mentioning Tyty/Aarons Cannas, I always feel the urge to tell my story. Not that I have the need to type that much, but especially if someone is considering buying, I have to make them think before they do. I think I would have been happy if someone have alerted me about them, so I would have not fallen for their unprofessionalism. Too bad. I didn't lose much money. I just don't know 10 of them if they are really true to name or not. I will have to wait another year to find that out for sure with Lilac Wonder for instance. It is still a tiny bulb. I haven't even planted the other ones yet. Right now I am limiting myself to the new bulbs and only 10 of them at a time. When I move at the end of January, I will take them out from the refrigerator one by one and plant them the day I say the bud peaking out at the neck. I kind of experienced that this is the safest method to make sure they flower for me... If I just plant them whenever, sometimes I have no plants and other times have like 12 of them blooming at the same time. I prefer continuous blooms.
An I prefer to badmouth TyTy/Aaron's Cannas.