Amaryllis from Balcony

What a lovely gift,Sue..I love the striped ones :o)

You have a lovely flower there! I'm glad it flowered for you so quickly!

Snoopdog,there are amaryllis in all shades and combinations of white and red. Look at my photos and you will see the many combinations I have!

It is a beauty isn't it! Thanks again, Balcony!

You are more than welcome, Stera! :-)) I have many more than I have room for but they just won't stop multiplying & I don't have the heart to throw them away after flowering!

@Snoopdog: I'm glad you have had a look at my Amaryllis as ,apart from 'Pinky', they are all grown from my own seeds & offsets. I've not bought a single bulb since I bought the original 3 way back in 2001! (Nor, other than 'Pinky', have I been given any!)

They are no more difficult to grow than Daffodils except they are tender & a frost will kill them.

Your welcome. :-)) I hope my photos will encourage you to grow them for yourself! :-)) They are as easy to grow as Daffodils - while you keep them frost free.

I brought one, similar to the one above, into the kitchen from the balcony just a day or two ago. All the Amaryllis inside our flat have finished flowering for this year so I thought I would bring a few in from the balcony.

I have never grown them outdoors so early before. Lots of bulbs have been growing & flowering on our balcony since the last week of March! But, thanks to the unprecedented warmth of April this year, they have all survived & have flowered as well. Many were still buds way down at the neck level when I put them out & others weren't even showing at all. Yet they have all grown up & flowered as well as if they had been in the flat! :-))

In a few weeks time I will be taking them down to the allotment where they will spend the summer. The big leaves make it impossible to keep them on the balcony let alone inside the flat!

How do you look after them in an allotment? Do you turn the pots on their sides when its time to dry them out? I've done that with my ancient red one but it finally died after several decades.

I enjoy looking at your photos but I don't think i would grow them in a big way. Most of my plants have to stay in the small conservatory as our few windowsills aren't big enough. And my overwintering fuchsias among other things take up a lot of the room.The amaryllis have been out there but we can see them well from the dining room through the patio doors.

Your balcony must be very sheltered! We do have quite a sheltered spot outside as the back of the house faces due south - its quite a shock after being out there to go round to the front and be met by a cold wind...

No, I don't turn them on their sides! They grow for much of the summer outside as they need to build up energy for flowering the following year. However they do go into the greenhouse about the end of August when I stop watering them. In the GH they are protected from the rain they might otherwise get. I'm trying to force them to hibernate so I don't want water falling on them.

Our balcony is not in the least sheltered other than by the enclosing walls at either end, as you will have seen from my photos. It is very windy where we live & as the balcony faces more or less Southwest when we get a south-west wind, (like we have had for 2 days this week), all my plants suffer greatly. The rain is also blown 3/4 of the way into the balcony. Not that it is capable of watering the pots on the railings unless we have lots of it.

I sympathise about the wind direction. The back garden faces south and we are four miles from the coast with precious little shelter in between so have very severe winds sometimes.
There are plenty of mature sycamores on the western boundary but they don't seem to moderate the wind much. The garden slopes gently up northwards too, so the conifer hedge at the bottom only shelters a fairly short distance. But on the other hand we get pretty mild winters usually - in eight years we have only had snow settling for several days twice and had very little ground frost this winter.
On the plus side the south facing house wall is great for hardening things off.

Then I imagine you have some difficult conditions to deal with!

Only the wind and it isn't windy all the time! But we also have mild winters, blue skies, wild flowers in abundance - I'm not complaining!

LOL! :-))

thought you'd like to know that the static one has started growing its leaves now so I'll start feeding soon.

That's good to know! :-) You should always wait till the leaves are growing after flowering before starting to feed.

I'm uploading some more recent photos of my Amaryllis if you are interested!

Cheers !