Last Amaryllis now at home

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I brought home the last of my Amaryllis from the greenhouse on Gerry’s allotment on Tuesday 1st December 2015.

This is by far the latest date I’ve ever done this! I thought it was late last year when I brought them home in the middle of November but this year, due to the extremely mild autumn we are having, I was able to leave them an extra two weeks!

They were in the greenhouse, where they had been since the end of August, to keep them dry & to encourage them to go into hibernation, (I have done this for several years now & it has given me very good results), as with several 100 bulbs now I’m finding it ever more difficult to keep them at home during the winter. By causing them to die back & go into hibernation I have much more control over when they start to grow again & thus can phase them into flowering in stages.

I took the bulbs down to the allotment in early May again this year. Most years I take them down several weeks later but because the spring was milder this year I started to take them down earlier. In fact I had started to put them out on our balcony as soon as they finished flowering as I had even less room in the flat than previous years. That was in April! I’ve never, ever put the bulbs out so early in the year before! Frost is always a possibility till the end of the first week in May most years here in this region of the UK. Yet I had nowhere else to put them. It was a risk I just had to take. It paid off for me fortunately as we had an incredibly mild, sunny April! Not a trace of frost all month! Very unusual!

Now half of the bulbs have been removed from the pots & the spent compost put on the greenhouse border where it will be incorporated into the soil to give it better moisture contention for next year. The other bulbs remained in their pots & I’ve now put them on the bedroom & kitchen windowsills, as in previous years.

But to continue to control their flowering period most of the pots continue dry & will stay that way till I’m ready to start them into growth again. The ones that have been removed from their pots will be potted up in fresh compost later still.

I have about 20 bulbs of an Anglo-American hybrid of my own creation. About 4 years ago a lady from the USA sent me some pollen of her Amaryllis which I used to fertilize some of my Amaryllis plants that were in flower at the time the pollen arrived. Only one plant set viable seed some of which I sowed & got excellent germination. These plants have been grown on & this coming spring should flower for the very first time.

They have never been put into hibernation but all the same they went through the same dry period as the rest in the greenhouse on Gerry’s allotment & were brought home at the beginning of November. These are on the windowsill of one of our bedrooms but had remained dry until I watered them on December 2nd. I hope to get these to flower before any of the other plants in the other bedroom or the kitchen. As they need between 6 to 8 weeks from watering/potting up dry bulbs to their flowering I don’t expect these to flower before the middle of January at the earliest.

I will write about them & include photos when they come into flower sometime next year.

• 6 Dec, 2015
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