Good job, OldDutch, and yes - luck! I've been repotting annually for some time now, having once decided to try doing without and finding the performance declined dramatically. Maybe though it was other cultural elements and not just not changing the soil.

I counted my bulbs this year. Twenty-one, even though I keep giving these things away, hah! I have to say though that this year it will be hard to let go of any of them, because I'm keeping records and want to document how bulb size does over the course of the year, with both the giants and the babies.

Ha! Ha! Counting the babies I also have 21, although most of mine are Sonatinis and potted multiples to a pot. Total of one flat full (8 pots), all of which have most bulbs starting to show new leaves and one (Fire Dancer of course) showing the tip of a bloom stem in addition to one of leaves! I guess you could say I am crowding them, but they didn't seem to mind at all last year. We shall see what this season brings...

I gotta say that Fire Dancer is my favorite and seems to also be the easiest. IIRC the one of the two bigger types is Red Lion and it had 4 offshoots this past year. They have their own nursery pot now and are all showing the tips of new leaves. The one baby of Lemon Sorbet looks to be big enough to bloom despite only being a yearling. I kept all of mine under the lights this past year, until I dried them down late last fall. They certainly can't go outside now in Minneapolis!

I hope I am not breaking too many rules, but I can only deal with what I have and am trying to take my best guesses. The light garden has been my sanity saver in the isolation of this current epidemic.

Firedancer is off to a fast start from a Christmas Day repotting. IMO Sonatini Fire Dancer is probably about the easiest hybrid hippeastrum to get to reflower (especially if it will do so for a newby like me).

The second bulb closeup showing a pair of emerging flower stems. Last year these three bulbs each had three spikes! All three are growing. The third bulb in this pot was the one that sent up a lone flower spike late last summer.

This is the same pot, now showing flower spike starting on all three Fire Dancer bulbs. these are the first hippeastrums I have ever gotten to rebloom; so you might well say I am excited.

OldDutch..Just love Fire Dancer!! It looks like fiery thick corduroy with those striations!

Getting something to rebloom alway gives one great satisfaction but for me it usually takes at least two years or more before I get a rebloom on most things.

Donna

I am a real tyro at Hippeastrums, but for my 2 cents red is the color just like for tulips. For the Sonatini size, Fire Dancer looks to me like the most dependable; I am finding it real easy and well suited for inside lights, too. These same three bulbs sent up 3 flower stems each last winter. At one time there were 16 flowers open all together. That was all in one 6" azealia pot and not one so much as leaned! What a crown of color that was! I am certainly in love with Fire Dancer!

This year I am quite pleased to get 4 flower stems out of those same bulbs and this is only the beginning - at least I hope only the beginning. (Also the only rebloom I seem to be getting this winter.)

For full sized it almost certainly has to be Red Lion (that more on the word of others rather than my own limited experience).

At this point I am having to decide what to purge in order to make room for spring garden seedlings! It looks like I am going to have to double my LED garden space. There are worse problems...

Old Dutch,

You sound like me and it seems that we both have been affected by C.H.A.D. (Compulsive Hippeastrum Acquisition Disorder) :-))))) I'm afraid to say there's no cure so give in and have fun :-)))

Problem is that I also have the Compulsive Disorder with garlic and all kinds of edible alliums, sweet potatoes, New Guinea impatiens, African violets, marigolds, tulips, edible peppers (my own seed for a type of hot and for sweet banana), broccolini, Japanese eggplant, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, chard, beets, daikons but there is only so much of this 72 year old to go around. And you can include cauliflowers and napa, too. It is all so inviting.

I love napa and the gold and purple cauliflowers and purple broccolinis; so I have tried to work out a flower border type of edible outside garden with mixed colors, textures and heights instead of actual rows. Last summer was somewhat successful; so I plan to expand on it this year.

Fire Dancer flower stems 2, 3, 4 with one more left to go for this year's repots. All the others are showing a fine crop of leaves however. Maybe more later this spring ...

I need to get the light garden ready now for spring transplants, hoping I get most of the seeds I tried to order!

Those Fire Dancers are incredible!!

I am real new to getting hippeastrums to rebloom, but Fire Dancer has done real well this year. The three bulbs involved here all bloomed with three stems last year. They were potted together then and so I repotted them together again this year, and got 5 stems. The rest of my hippeastrums got leaves but no flower stems. At least I have not lost a bulb in the process yet.