Amaryllis being shunted around house & balcony April 2017

4 comments

Amaryllis being shunted around house & balcony April 2017
On living room table today:

My Amaryllis have been shunted around the house & balcony this week! Only today I made the biggest shake up of the week! During the frosty days (Tues – Thurs) this week the plants that I had been putting out on the balcony, to harden off, after they had finished flowering in our living room, had to be brought in at night & put out again the following day.

As I don’t think we are likely to have any more frosty weather in the coming week or two, I’ve moved lots of Amaryllis plants from the 2 bedrooms to the balcony. Now the only plants left are in the kitchen window where there are probably more than 20 pots waiting their turn to go out! They will have to stay there a week or two yet as there simply isn’t enough physical space on the balcony to put them out yet!

Just last week I planted up about 40 pots of Amaryllis bulbs! I don’t expect these to flower before July-August. Under our windows on the balcony there is a thick plastic ledge which runs the entire length of the balcony. I stacked the pots of bulbs 3 tiers high on the 2/3rds I can actually use. You will understand it better when you see one of the photos I took after I finished stacking them. Well I had to undo all that work so I could put my Amaryllis plants in their place.

A few just potted up:

But first I had to empty the mini-greenhouse on the big table in the most protected corner of the balcony. I had lots of Geraniums & Fuchsias as well as some pots of Amaryllis bulbs I planted up about a month ago & stacked inside. Eventually I cleared away enough space to be able to put most of the 40 pots inside. Then I had to make many trips in & out of the house to bring 3 or 4 plants at a time from the bedrooms to the balcony. Once on the balcony table I had to put short canes in the pots & tie string around them to hold up the leaves of the Amaryllis. They become very long & are strap like. They are a terrible nuisance & they break very easily. Some leaves are already more than 50-60cm long! Then I had to stack them were the bulbs in pots had been before being moved to the mini-greenhouse.

On Sunday I will speak to my friend Gerry, who told me a couple of months ago I could put them in his garden, or rather his very elderly neighbour’s garden. She told him that he could use her garden for whatever he liked as she could no longer grow vegetables; she didn’t feel she had the strength any longer to be able to run her vegetable garden. He’d been helping her with her garden for years.

But before I can take them to the garden they need some hardening off as they have not been able to go outside before now. At least if we are warned of a possible frost during the next 2 weeks I can cover them all with some fleece being as they are all so close together.

• 30 Apr, 2017
• 2 likes

More blog posts by balcony