My Amaryllis hybrids have now begun to flower!

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Amaryllis hybrids have now begun to flower!

Though I’ve mistakenly put Anglo-American hybrid on some of the photos! This particular bulb is one of 3 bulbs that I put in the same 5" pot last year when I was repotting many of my bulbs last year.

At least one of the pots was mistakenly put in the other bedroom with the Anglo-American hybrids. I really should have realised what had happened when the scape began to grow as it is in a pot with several other offshoots which I intended to separate & repot this year. All my Anglo-American hybrids were put ONE to a 5" pot last year. NONE went into a pot together. This alone should have made me suspicious when I started labelling it as an Anglo-American Amaryllis!

Many pots last year were overcrowded with the new offsets that had been forming & were breaking the pots. I use plastic pots, not ceramic or clay so they are easily damaged when the bulbs/offsets begin to expand. As this process has to be done while they are dormant it wasn’t until February 2015 when I finally got around to doing it.

(Wrong date – should have been 16th January 2016!)

This year I’ve been confronted with a similar problem only I started to “tackle” it back at the end of November/beginning of December before I brought the plants home from the greenhouse on Gerry’s allotment. As space in our flat is really at a premium, & there was even less this year, I decided to empty out as many of the the remaining pots as I could in order to save on space in the flat during the winter. In previous years they used to spend the winter in their pots on the windowsills of our 2 bedrooms & in the kitchen where we have a 3m (10ft) windowsill. Last year all these windowsills were filled up to their maximum capacity – even though they were in tiers 4 rows high!

So many had to go on top of a big wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. None received any water until buds were seen to be coming out of the necks of the bulbs where upon I began to give them a little water again, increasing as time went by.

All the pots in one bedroom windowsill had to go out onto the balcony in mid March – the first time I’ve ever put them out so early as we often get frosts till the end of the first week in may some years. I did try to cover them with a plastic sheet on nights when frost was forecast & fortunately they all survived! :-)) I also took them down to the Gerry’s greenhouse on his allotment much earlier than other years. The greenhouse has no heating & a couple of pieces of glass had got broken during the winter making it prone to frost. Nevertheless they still managed to survive & were later moved out of the greenhouse on to some shelving on the plot itself for the summer. I had to take my bulbs down in several journeys over several weeks as they finished flowering at home.

One bedroom windowsill has 4 tiers of bulbs – all Amaryllis hybrids I’ve grown from my own seed.

These have grown & flowered & multiplied over the years. I only started giving them water a couple of weeks ago. Some will have to me moved into new pots as lots of the pots have 5-6 or more offsets in them! Last year I didn’t have the space, compost or pots to pot up everything into its own individual pot. Although I don’t generally let offshoots or seedling bulbs go into hibernation till after they have flowered for the first time I just couldn’t leave them growing this winter.

I may lose a few bulbs because being so small they are unable to store sufficient water or food. Nevertheless I expect the majority to pull through with very few casualties.

I’ve put 20 big bulbs in 6" pots now on the kitchen windowsill, they all have buds at different stages, some are only just peeping out of the bulb neck others are several inches high already.

These were some of the bulbs I put in paper bags to remain dry over the winter:

Some of those that I emptied out of their pots in the greenhouse last December. The buds had started to grow quite high on some of the bulbs! These will be in flower in about a month’s time. During February I will have dozens of bulbs flowering – as well as in March & April! Having so many I have to start them off over a period of a couple of months so that way I get flowers for several months in a row!

17 Jan, 2016
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Comments

Seaburngirl

and I thought I did well to keep 3 of mine for the last 4 years. Mine tend to flower in may though.

17 Jan, 2016

Terratoonie

Hi Balcony ...
those stacked pots look amazing... adding to GoYpedia Storage Ideas.

18 Jan, 2016

Balcony

Glad to hear you've been able to keep some going over the last 4 years, SB! :-)) I wish you all the very best for more flowers this year & for further years of enjoyment! :-))

Thanks, TT! "Needs must" as they say! I'm in the process of adding more pots of repotted Amaryllis to the kitchen windowsill! I made a start with the first 20 a few days ago, as you will have seen form the photos above, (well, I still haven't got a photo of them from the outside as it's all but impossible to get a photo from the inside!) but I've run out of 6" pots! I need to get lots more.

Just this morning I repotted the Amaryllis Anglo-American hybrid 1st of 2016 that has now finished flowering. That has gone back into the bedroom window from whence it came. but as I tried to make room for a little bigger pot I found that another of the Amaryllis hybrids (Red) from previous years had also got amongst the Anglo-American ones. As the buds were beginning to open I moved it into the living room to take the place of the one I moved out & repotted earlier.

There are a lot more Anglo-American hybrids with scapes that are very high! Their buds will begin to open in the coming week! Then I can start to move them into the living room as well! :-))

18 Jan, 2016

Steragram

Have you ever knocked one of those stacks over?
What's the difference between the British ones and the Americans?

19 Jan, 2016

Hywel

They have beautiful flowers. I didn't know they could survive very cold temperatures. What's the difference between the Anglo-American ones and the 'ordinary' ones ?

20 Jan, 2016

Steragram

Lol Hywel, you did say you never read the comments above yours....

20 Jan, 2016

Hywel

I could have saved myself some typing if I did :D

20 Jan, 2016

Balcony

Thank you for your comments on my Amaryllis :-))

As several of you ask about the difference between my "ordinary" hybrid Amaryllis & my "Anglo-American" hybrids I'll explain again, though I think I've really explained a few times before!

The "ordinary" hybrids are the ones I've been growing from my own seeds since before I joined GoY. (One of the very first blogs I ever wrote on GoY was about growing Amaryllis from seed!)

These came about because in 2001 I bought 3 Amaryllis bulbs from a Dutch trader in what was the very first International Market held in Huntingdon. These were unnamed, unpacked bulbs I bought in a street market. These bulbs grew & flowered for several years until one year it occurred to me to try & cross-fertilize them & try to get some viable seed. I'd tried some years before when we still lived in Cuenca, Spain. At that time none of the seeds germinated. This time I had an overwhelming number of seeds that germinated!

After 4 years these flowered for the first time & I used a photo of me standing in front of them all, flowering on our living room table, as my avatar photo on GoY for many years.

Then, in 2012, a lady, on another gardening forum I also post on, sent me some, unsolicited, pollen from her Amaryllis. As I had some in flower when it arrived I tried cross-fertilizing some of my plants with the pollen. Only one bulb gave me a couple of seedpods full of seeds. I sowed some & sent some to the lady in the USA who'd sent me the pollen.

When these germinated I thought I need some way of identifying them in the future as they all look a like & to be able to send a "progress report" to the lady in the USA. The name "Anglo-American hybrids" came to my mind, as, after all, the pollen came from the USA but the bulbs from the UK.

So there you have it - in a, (rather big), nutshell! - why some are just plain simply called Amaryllis hybrids & others are called Anglo-American hybrids.

Of the Anglo-American hybrids I currently have 4 bulbs on our living room table, one of which has opened its first flower for the first time since sowing 4 years ago! There are 3 more in bud, one of which will flower in a day or two, while there are two others which will still take a few more days. While in the bedroom, on the windowsill, there are more bulbs with scapes at differing heights which will flower during February.

I have 20 pots of these Anglo-American hybrids in all! One has finished flowering, one is opening today & several more will be opening their flowers for the first time ever as the week progresses.

25 Jan, 2016

Hywel

Thank you :)

25 Jan, 2016

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