May we had the welcome sight of many beautiful Amaryllis flowers. They have been growing now for around 8 years. Collecting Amaryllis bulbs started the way I suspect most have, with a discounted bulb. There was a pink bulb at the hardware store on discount because it had only one sad flower left. So it came to it's new home and was ignored. A snail tried to eat it so I transplanted the bulb into a new pot, put it inner and forgot about it. When I looked again it had a baby! The original bulb died but I still have it's baby which is huge and thriving. The next year I brought home two new bulbs one red and the other white. When the new bulbs had babies I just left them in the pot connected to their mothers. In other words I ignored the new bulbs also. This went on over the years with a flower blooming occasionally. I had begun to believe these were greenhouse plants and would never be as pretty outside in the yard.
In 2016 the bulbs went crazy blooming! I had finally stopped ignoring them and they responded. All three colors bloomed! But that was when it got strange. The pink was tall and beautiful, The red was deep red and miniature. Then I had two different white flowers! I had purchased a solid white bulb and instead one bloomed white with a tiny red outline. The other looked like a peppermint candy, it had patches of swirling red against the white. The white bulb was just white when I bought it! I had no idea what had happened. Recently I started looking on youtube.com and found Amaryllis Man. He explains that the plants are easy to hybridize. So the peppermint striped and red outlined amaryllis were a combination of the bulbs I had bought! That has really caught my imagination and the desire to get a larger variety of bulbs. It seems that they are also easy to grow from seed which will make for interesting experiments!
Later when the flowers had finished I put the bulbs in several larger pots and separated the babies. The babies really struggled and the snails got fatter! Most of the babies were lost! That is why I went back to leaving the babies with their moms. Of course I lost the pictures I took and forgot to tag the plants by color!
White amaryllis with a red edging.
In 2017 the amaryllis put on a beautiful show in April/May! The plants had crowded their pots growing like crazy. The secret to growing amaryllis is don't ignore them!
The babies from 2016 were large but didn't bloom this year. The oldest pink amaryllis was alone in a large pot with it's two babies and still they needed to be repotted this year. I left the mother bulb in the large pot and transplanted the babies in separate pots. One of the babies had separated from it's mother and formed a nice bulb. The other baby was still connected to it's mom and looked like a large scallion bloom! So in a little over two and a half years the plant went from a tiny baby to a blooming bulb with babies of it's own! The sister bulb is still growing and getting more leaves but no signs of flowers.
In ordered to right the scallion baby up, I had to plant it awkwardly. The baby had seven large and long leaves and they started dying. So was it dying because I hurt it or was it going dormant? Amaryllis can drive you crazy! So as the weeks went by the baby shed more leaves. When it only had three leaves left it suddenly did the unexpected, it had babies! In the matter of three days the leaves of three babies appeared! That was very confusing. Then it got even stranger, the bulb suddenly started throwing up leaves like crazy! Little tips of leaves started popping out of the scallion shaped bulb every day! Then when I looked again the fifth leaf was actually a bud and now I'm waiting for a Winter bloom.
The new babies brought the amaryllis count to 13 babies this year! So I did what anyone else would have done. Went shopping for more bulbs! Three weeks earlier I had bought daffodil bulbs and they already are getting roots! So of course I had to buy another amaryllis bulb this one is named Minerva and it came from the hardware store. Minerva is a deep red with a white star like center and was in a kit.
The kit contained a large bulb with a flowering shoot and leaves just starting to show. There was also a pot and a disc of dirt. First you place the disc in the pot and then add 3.5 cups of warm water. Once the water is absorbed the bulb is placed in the pot and the dirt snugged around it. Don't leave any pockets of air around the bulb. Then treat the bulbs like any other amaryllis.
But I didn't stop there, another four amaryllis bulbs found their way into the shopping basket. The four bulbs are "garden variety" with a lovely white flower. Two of the white bulbs are starting to grow and one has a flower shoot! The white bulbs will look great with the beautiful purple irises and daffodils in the flower bed.
Many amaryllis growers recommend to remove the brown papery outer skin of the bulb. I don't usually do this but if I hadn't this bulb would have rotted. It looked fine until the brown skin was removed. So be careful when you buy any bulbs.
So what have I learned?
1. Don't ignore plants most like to be cared for.
2. Be careful when watering. Try not to get water on the leaves. Amaryllis can develop a red fungus. Water on leaves can sit between leaves and rot the leaves.
3. Amaryllis grow great in pots but look out for snails.
4. Keep the out of strong winds, their long leaves can be easily damaged.
5. Leave mothers and babies together. The mothers won't grow as quickly but the babies will thrive and grow into flowering bulbs faster.
6. Feed them with fertilizer.
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