Have 3 amarylus bulbs from last year-Oct-Dec blooming- after foliage became yellow cut this off & stored the bulbs,feeding them each month.Hve taken them out 2 weeks ago, repotted & placed in a sunny position & have foliage but no flower stem growing.What did I do wrong? I wish to get my beauties to re-flower, have planted new bulbs also.They are all indoors.Help David anderson davidanderson@bigfoot.com
Don't need the dormancy, actually evergreen. Keep in well lit area, well fertilized, moist at all times and they should build up into clumps of large bulbs that flower regularly.
You know what they say about making sure that the pots are small to encourage flowering? I don't understand where that advice originated from. The key to getting good reblooms is to feed the plant well through-out the growing season (summer) so that the bulb can build up nutrient stores. I.e., get the bulb to grow as large as possible - the larger the better. After flowering, I grow the bulbs on to larger pots. If it's winter, I give it the best lit location in the house that I can find. If it is actively growing, I fertilise sparingly while the days are short and it's still cool. In summer, I put it out in a sunny spot, and feed it well (I use a slow release capsulated fertilizer in spring, supplemented by liquid fertilizer later in the season.) By the fall, the bulb should have really swollen up with stored food. When the temperature drops below 10 degrees C consistently, I cut off the foliage and store the bulb, container and all, in a cool dark place and allow the potting medium to dry out. (Watch out for those peesky rodents - you could lose some of the bulbs to them if they are hungry enough!) As Ron pointed out - a period of dormancy is generally not needed. But by treating it the way I do, I have control over when it should flower (I want it to display at Christmas, New Year's day) by forcing at the right time. I use a controlled environment - my little propagation set up with undersoil heater cable and artificial light to ensure that the time taken to force flowering is fairly predictable. But you could try taking out into a well lit spot indoors and start watering it again. I not only get good blooms every year, but I also get a good number of new bulblets as well. These take a minimum of 2 years of growth before they mature enough to bloom.
I think the Weekend Gardener explains it very well. Mine put out a flower stalk in September for no reason that I could figure out. I was on vacation and somehow a slug got to it and ate the flower stalk. So much for a flower this year. I think the propagation set up that the Weekend Gardener has set up is the key. It is hard to simulate summer conditions without it. They have always been frustrating to me and I think I will stop trying to grow them. I know it's hard to do but if I'm tempted to buy one at Christmas instead of a Poinsettia again I think I will just throw it away after flowering. I like the Brugmansias much better for their large, fragrant, trumpet-shaped flowers, and enough though they don't flower in winter I think they are more worthwhile to grow.
I've seen a living room amaryllis clump built up with years of consistent feeding that was spectacular. It was near Vancouver, too, so you don't have to be in a bright area to get a good response.
One thing to add, it's a bad idea to cut off foliage that's still green. Green foliage contains nutrients, and if you cut it off, then the bulbs lose the nutrients stored in the leaves. However, if you let the leaves yellow (which should happen naturally in the fall), and then you cut it off, that's perfectly fine. The plant has now "soaked in" in the nutrients from the leaves and are ready to lose the yellow leaves. Last year I became impatient with one amaryllis that refused to yellow its leaves in autumn. Too impatient for storage so I cut its leaves off. Dumb thing...it didn't bloom next spring. I find larger pots to work well. They grew lots of roots in the 10 inch pots, and of course, larger roots meant larger leaves and bulbs. They are gigantic now! I'm certainly looking forward to blooms next year. So, forget the small pots.
