Amazindirt,

I "fell off the edge" right about the time of your last post. Things got a little busy around here.

I can name the curlers whose screenshots you've posted. :) Christopher Svae and Håvard Petersson. You should've screenshotted their skip, Thomas Ulsrud! Dang, I think I'll watch me some curling tonight.

Thank you for your description of how SLC differs from TN. It reinforces the idea that all gardening knowledge is necessarily local.

We've had a freeze here. My hippies were all very much sheltered in pots that had been moved to be beside the house and under an upper level deck, and dry as all get-out, plus the presence of the lake (large bodies of water mitigate ambient temps) made the light freeze that much less impactful, so I doubt they even noticed. In the coming week night temps will drop into the mid-20's. Therefore today I moved all the pots into the garage, so as to cool down further without actually facing freezing.

When in future it seems possible that night temps in the garage may descend into the mid 30's, I'll move them all into an insulated area that will never get below freezing - probably about 40, minimum. There they will rest until I want to wake them up.

As I wake them up (I will not wake them all at the same time, so as to extend blooming season through the very long MN winters, and even then it will be somewhat random because some plants bloom later than others, I'm good with that) I will put them into fresh mix, removing as much of the old soil as possible while minimizing root disturbance. The fact is that soil acidity/fertilizer-salt accumulation can change, depending on the history of the pot. I'll add bone meal to the new soil mix, because I had amazing results from a community pot of basic "red lion" types - wimpy when planted and I was only doing this because every plant deserves one last chance, but every single one of them quadrupled in volume over the summer - which I credit to this addition.

This has been a generally winning strategy for me. BUT. While some bulbs seem to thrive under my conditions, others gradually languish. Therefore it seems to me that there is no one rule that fits for all bulbs, in every locale.

But that's kinda the fun of it, right?? The frustration, maybe - but also the fun.

My intention this year is to measure the dimension of every bulb at re-potting time, and compare to bulb size both at the end of blooming time, and to its hopefully bulked-up dimension at the end of the next season. Going to set up a spreadsheet for documentation. It will surely turn out that some bulbs perform very well under the conditions I have to offer, others less so. But in any case, I will learn. It will be useful info.

And if I have to order replacements of my favorites, because I haven't figured them out yet, well, so be it.

Joan

My advise is what is best for the bulb, not what is in line with when bulb caretakers want it to flower. I understand those aren't the same thing.

I started with 2 bulbs in 2 different pots 10 years ago. I repotted and gave away my 24 new bulbs that have grown off my original 2. They have enjoyed being root bound. I fertilize all summer after the blooms are gone until our natural fall begins. as with farmers our plant growth follow their pattern. When I see life beginning anytime from late January on I begin watering as usual which is weekly. I live in 9b on the gulf coast so I don’t move my plant at all as they’re in large pots. All leaves fall off by mid November and I continue to water it every other week but not with the drenching it gets during the warmer months.

Same amaryllis as shown in the original picture. First year, bought from a store it bloomed as expected but with different routines the next 2 seasons I have only gotten healthy......leaves. (But it is nice to see it is alive ;))

Rouge - give it time - a really big bulb flowers best based on our experience. We just have two - a peachy one that bloomed for Christmas and is just starting to fade and a deep red one that is just opening now and should be in bloom for New Year's Day. These have spent all their lives here in pots - indoors until mid-late spring; outdoors on the back porch or patio until the end of summer when water gets withheld to prompt dormancy; stored dormant in basement until new growth starts to show (early December); brought up to kitchen windowsill to get light and be part of the houseplant watering regime:

rouge.. if thats where it usually sits.. it probably needs more light ... but harden it off to new light levels if you can move it ...

Interesting that you mention light ken. The one pictured, until recently, was next to a bulb, bought this past mid November, and it has 'easily' produced flowers this season.

(It has been my experience that amaryllis bulbs, at least the ones bought "new", dont need 'tons' of light to produce a stalk with flowers.)

For those of you who put your amaryllisssesssesss outside in a pot in the summer, and bring them back in at the end of the summer, do you repot them and if so, when? Do you cut off any roots? (zone 5a, Ontario).

Hah, I love your "amaryllisssesssesss," I feel the same way about writing this word, though I'm getting more used to it.

I repot every year because the one year I didn't, while the bulbs still bloomed, they just didn't do as well as when I repot in fresh soil. Others don't do this, and you'll find articles that suggest keeping them in the same pot for 3-5 years is just fine. I just... wouldn't. Soil chemistry changes over time depending on watering and fertilizing practices, including what your water source is, how often and when you fertilize, when you "flush," etc etc.

Read up on things like how to send amaryllises into dormancy, if you want to do that. I have to, where I live. I tip pots in about the last week of August (to keep out rain and water from my irrigation system), and let them dry out slowly; leave them outside until hard freeze threatens; then put them in a frost-free but cool area until around Thanksgiving, when I begin repotting over the course of two to four weeks. I have a lot of bulbs and it's fine with me to spread out the bloom period through late winter. I also don't care about having flowers at Christmas. There's enough other STUFF in the house at that time. In fact, some years I haven't repotted anything at all until December 21, which gives me flowers indoors until spring is actually close, where I live. Works for me.

But we have one forum contributor (a more southern zone) who prefers to just keep them growing if that's what they want, and swears by the practice. He never intentionally withdraws water etc. I believe him! I just can't do it that way.

Re trimming roots: again, there are various practices. Rule of thumb would be not to cut off the fat white living roots when repotting, nor the smaller feeder roots if they're nice and white. Dead-looking small roots, I try to remove, without being too persnickety about it. I figure that in nature, those roots would become part of the soil. So if it's easy to clean up a bunch, I do. If doing so will hurt other roots, I don't.

See this article about another kind of trimming: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6040635/effect-of-thick-basal-plates-and-what-to-do#26361366

Rouge21,

I've always read (and experienced) that the more leaves you can get to grow on your bulb, the better. I'm disappointed if I get only 6; 8 is okay; 10 means the potential of maybe maybe 3 bloom stalks? So whatever you can do to boost this baby, in terms of light and fertilizer and warmth, I'm sure will reward you.

I admire your decorative pot, very much!

Don't know others' experience with rigid pots, but I don't dare plant in them, instead always planting in plastic and then (sometimes) putting the plastic pot into something ceramic for display. This is because if a bulb is really super happy, sometimes it puts out offsets, and their combined determination to expand distorts the plastic pot (yay). If the same mom/babies are in a rigid pot, well, it would seem that something has to give: either the pot breaks, or the bulbs don't get to grow the way they want.

I don't think this would be an issue with this smaller bulb in this pot. But it's something to think about.

Joan

P.S. Love the hockey photo. :)

Interesting comments re how often to repot.... DH is responsible for houseplants here. He says he considers these ‘classic do-nothng plants’ and can’t remember when he last repotted one. We can’t remember exactly how old they are but guessing maybe 6 and 8 years old. The oldest one (the one in bloom in the picture above) is in an 8” pot and the younger one is in a 6” pot so it looks like DH must have repotted the older one at least once. If you click on the picture and look in the middle, you can see that the one in bloom has sent up a second flowerstalk this year. That is a first for it. We enjoy the show they put on in winter and find them pretty easy-care all year in the pots.

Wow, thanks for those links Northern G. I was just wondering about basal plates a couple of days ago -lol . I’m very afraid that I’ll develop the Amaryllis disease once I start delving further into them. I just got over the Orchid disease. I am looking forward to reading them

With regard to light needs, they need sun. The reason why you find them able to bloom the first year from growers, is that like most bulbs, the flower was produced during the previous growing year, where they are grown in absolutely full sun in rows,

I am curious why it is that when I buy a bulb it is plump even though it has no roots. I used to cut the roots off mine when I followed a dormancy regime, but my bulbs always shrivelled up quite a bit...(so I stopped doing that)

dbarron and ken, our home and its windows are such there isn't a great full sun indoor locale. But next Fall I will see if I can set the bulbs up in a spot that does maximize light.

I now have 3 bulbs (2 new this year and are flowering nicely)

and my 2 year old "leafy" live one. Hopefully at least one of the three will reshow its stuff.

Of course these plants are quite showy ("gaudy" to some?) but I can tell you that they can provide lots of enjoyment. Speaking personally I gifted a quite senior relative with a bulb earlier this Fall. She has been very excited seeing the progress of growth...the stem as it was nothing and now she tells us there are two stems, each about 21 in in height with dark red flowers on both. This is for sure the winter to be able to enjoy something live indoors eh?

Gargamel,

Those store-bought/commercially ordered bulbs were kept in special humidity and temperature conditions that are hard for the individual gardener to duplicate. If your dormancy procedure included digging up the bulbs, leaving them to dry out, and cutting off top and bottom to make them look like what you buy straight from growers/stores, you may have your answer. :) Glad you don't do that anymore!

I left mine in their pots to dry off in October and then repotted them on Christmas day with new pots and new medium. They almost all still had a full set of plump white roots that I did not trim. They did not go outside but instead spent the year under high intensity LED lights 16 on 8 off (on a timer). They got a weak fertilizer every watering. I got a whole raft of pups, too. Now less than a week after repoting all are showing new growth and one of the Sonatinis has already sending up a flower stalk.

FWIW the Sonatinis and the standard sized hippies behave somewhat differently. IMO the Sonatinis need less of a dormancy period and are easily to plump up than the larger bulbs. It also looks to me like they rebloom easier, too. I strongly suspect that this is not a one size fits all consideration.

OldDutch (one size fits all), it never is :) But general practices can still be recommended/observed.

This is all such great information and so helpful. I really appreciate you all sharing your experiences and knowledge. Thanks!

We planted one of our bulbs outdoors in late May. Here it is this past week (leaves over 2 feet long):

UPDATE (Dec 2021):

It doesn't take much to make me happy these days :). Here is the same bulb as shown immediately above as of a few days ago:

Finally I see a flower to be!

I am a no-fuss gardener with my 11 or 12 amaryllis bulbs. Most of them I have had for 8-10 years, and I have re-potted only once. Right now, there are 10 buds in different stages, and one large pot has three soft-ball-sized bulbs and two smaller offshoots -- there are five fat buds in this pot, which ought to make for a magnificent show soon! Can't wait. Love these plants!

Excellent! If I had to guess I would have said there wasn't enough growth to promise a bloom this winter, but there it is. Nice job, I may show this photo to my own bulbs so they can get the hint.

Lol - same here katob - show them the photos!

If I had to guess I would have said there wasn't enough growth to promise a bloom this winter,

Hey @katob Z6ish, NE Pa, can you elaborate? I ask as I was 'impressed' by the size of the leaves that this particular plant showed this past summer outdoors while in the ground. Im guessing you see plants with even more leaf growth. (I was hopeful that this Amaryllis would flower if only because the bulb was quite large as others I have are much "scrawnier" and only ever give me leaves :( ).

This one I bought earlier in November now is in full bloom:

What a pretty colour, rouge

there are five fat buds in this pot, which ought to make for a magnificent show soon! Can't wait.

5!? I cant imagine what that looks like for a single potted Amaryllis. We would love to see pics over the next month.

Beautiful flower -in spite of that snowy background lol

Rouge, I hope you didn't find my comment insulting. By saying I didn't think it would have flowered, my comment was based more on the number of leaves the bulb had rather than anything else. Long ago someone told me a bulb needs a certain number of leaves for each flower stalk it produces. Obviously that's not a rule, but I think they meant the more growth the better and that's probably pretty accurate.

I hope you didn't find my comment insulting.

No no no @katob Z6ish, NE Pa! I apologize if I gave that impression. I am always wanting to learn more about these plants.

Guys and gals, I just reread every entry in this thread. So many excellent posts....different and interesting ways to keep our Amaryllis alive and hopefully to REbloom. Thank you so much for participating. Please keep the posts and pictures coming.

@katob Z6ish, NE Pa the one in the picture, the one we bought in the Fall of 2020is finally in bloom! (The one in the foreground, with the very short stalk, we purchased back in November, and did have a much taller first stalk with flowers...see pic a few posts above). (With two stalks these plants provide lots of interest for a good long time...love them.)

What a beautiful show, perfect for these cold and dark nights! Maybe I'll allow myself a brief look at the amaryllis next time I see them for sale. There were a few really nice ones for sale closer to the holidays but with open blooms I thought they were too far along to take home. But they were such a dark red....

I really do have enough, but what's one more? -and I did give three potfuls away last fall, so if anyone is doing the math that's three open spaces... and since I rudely took the bulbs out of their pots before giving them away I actually have empty pots as well ;)

Awww…so cute rouge

If any of you recall my mention above of my pot with five stems (three huge bulbs and one smaller one), they are blooming now. I shall try to post a photo soon... if I can figure out how to do that.... =)

Come on @roxanna I cant sleep, in anticipation of the photos!

I would like to know more about Joan’s recommendation to add bone meal to potting mix when repotting. i thought that organic fertilizer is useless in a soilless medium. Is bone meal different?

Last year I kept my amaryllis, with the long green leaves, healthy until I made up my outside planters (semi-shade). In a moment of madness I put the amaryllis into a the back of a planter of mixed coleus. The long green leaves were a exotic contrast and looked great all summer. It really flourished. I didn't save the bulb but composed everything after the first frost. It was a great way to continue to enjoy those beautiful leaves. Just an idea.

That is a very good idea D Bee…

Now that this thread has gone on so long, I am going to confess my Amaryllis crimes…which I have committed every year. I buy new bulbs every year, but can not stand the pots they come with. For me, function follows form -lol. So I plant them grouped in a soup tureen and water them sparingly until they’ve finished blooming and then I put them in a shallow oblong pot, along with the previous years non bloomers, put the pot out in the summer in full sun and if it doesn’t get rain, then too bad. However after reading along this thread I have decided to try not to torture the old bulbs so much and I have repotted them in a functional (lol) pot under grow lights. The difference is amazing

A white one...

kitasei2, Joan here. I had great results from adding bone meal to my soilless mix, for amaryllises. (Having said which, this year I decided to supplement with "GardenTone" organic slow-release fertilizer, which still smells very much of bone meal but obviously has other nutrients as well. Hoping for something even better in terms of performance.)

Just wondering why you would think, or where you heard, that adding organic material to a soilless mix might be either useless or undesirable? I'm trying to think ahead and wondering if the idea might be that, since it's soilless, such a mix is not organic? Well, peat moss is definitely an organic material, for starters.

I think often the advantages of not using "real dirt/soil" in these mixes is of several types: (1) You know what's in them so it's easier to control what you add to them (including stuff like bone meal, or worm castings, or Osmocote or whatever). (2) There is much less chance of disease or pests being present. (3) The texture of the soil and its airiness is more suitable for most plants grown in pots. (Pot-growing is *way* different than growing in the ground but that's a subject for a different thread.)

Adding bone meal or other organic fertilizer to your potting mix will not interfere with any of these advantages. But I hope to hear more from you about how you understand the issues.

Good growing,

Joan

Joan, My understanding is that soilless mixes are biologically inert so that they won’t be able to convert an orgsnic compost or fertilizer into something usable by the plant. i really want clarification on this!

I think (but I don't know) that if the substrate continues to have nutrients available, there's a good chance that bacteria that can utilize and break it down will colonize.

kitasei2, Very Interesting! I will have to do some digging on this, because while what you say sounds entirely credible, I can also imagine that nothing stays pure forever. We're always introducing organic stuff, with its burden of life, into a mineral world. (Think lichens.) If you have something you can cite that I might read, just to get me going, I would very much appreciate it. Thanks!!

Meanwhile, it was indeed a huge difference in performance between the puny, starved, water-nourished bulbs that I moved into a basic MG-plus-bone meal mix, and other normally-maintained bulbs (just mix plus soluble fertilizer). The bulbs that were meant to be thrown on the compost heap grew faster than any others I've ever owned.

So I finally looked up this question, and found this article on Gardenweb: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/1377854/organic-fertilizers-in-a-soiless-mix-not-good-help

Fascinating information! And it all points to exactly what kitasei2 said, with the elaboration that what is missing in soilless mixes is all the bacteria etc that helps in breaking down organic material, and without which it just doesn't "go." (Kind of explains mummies found in peat bogs, right?)

I guess I wasted a lot of GardenTone in my amaryllis pots, hah, but when I mix that old soil out into the garden with new plantings it'll be pretty useful. :) Meanwhile, good thing I'm steadily watering with Jack's Classic Tomato Fertilizer.

Joan

Where my amaryllis go when they are all leaves :):

(And more to come :))