Amaryllis (Hippeastrum)

Lovely colours David,you have captured them well...

Good close up photo :o)

Lovely, delicate colouring.

Superb..Arlene must be so pleased !

I am especially pleased to have grown this to fruition, and posted a pic or 2, as Arlene has messaged me to say that today (26th March) is her birthday, and she is out celebrating with her family "down there" in Wales.

Could I take it upon myself, on behalf of GOY, to yell " HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARLENE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, hope we don;t wake her up too early tomorrow, lol!

:-)

Very pretty, beautifully photographed too.

Many Thanks, Elke, it has "gone over" now, but Arlene has sent me instructions on after-care.

It´s a shame they last such a short time! But if you are lucky & can put it in a sunny spot in your garden then next year you will be rewarded with more flowers. Don't forget to give them some fertilizer so they bulk up for next year.

Many Thanx for that, Balcony. think, however, this far north, they HAVE to be indoor plants. Will try the instructions for storing the bulbs for this use. :-)

My seed plants lived all through the winter & they had no protection. I let them dry out in the growbag that had lived in during the rest of the year & did nothing to protect them.

I know very well that the temps you & I experience, especially in winter, are quite different but even so we had up to (or should that be "down to") -4C on several nights in February this year. Temps like that are unusually low for this region. For you that must be almost a balmy night but for us that is really, really cold!

Surely they can stand outside for at least two months in the summer? I put my potful of Amaryllis (Yes, the ones you can see in my picture!) out onto the balcony just a couple of days ago. We are having lovely sunny, warm days but the night temps fall as low as 4 or 5C, still pretty cold but these bulbs don't seem to be worried.

I may possibly get one flower stalk this year from just one of the 3 bulbs in the pot. :( As last summer was a "non-summer" they probably didn't get enough sun to ripen. Even the red one, that has given flowers every year, won't be giving any this year as it has split itself into at least 4 smaller bulbs.

Hi Balcony!

-4C would be dire here, too! It is now 5 mins b4 midnight, and my car temp gauge says 8C,so we do not live in a far-flung, dark, cold, foreign land, as is the popular myth. I have, as always come April, got my first brown suntan!! We never experience the flooding, snowstorms and blizzards, etc., which the more southern UK seems to have experienced in recent years. I could grow date palms, if I wished, really, My Dad has a fab one! It would be really interesting to try the Amaryllis outdoors, never considered it b4.

Am sorry that yours haven't done so well recently, especially the lovely red one, I have a red (if I remember correctly) in bud, but it is indoors right now. Will soon see!

My Dad also grew a kiwi plant in his former garden a decade ago. He had just managed to get it to flower when my parents sold their house. I took it on board, cut it hard back, potted up (which involved taking a pick-axe to the concrete garden path and very hard pruning. I put it at the "picture" windows overlooking the garden and, every night I came home, had to disengage it from the vertical blinds, and re-train it to grow up the trellis I provided. I put it outdoors last week, and it is growing, rampantly, along the wires I set up. I love the large leaves alone! :-)