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Two hanging baskets, one below the other, have gone mad this year!
A column of plants
Chlorophyll filled
Turning a house
Into a garden.
Green with splashes
Of colours, gaudy
Reminds me of
The sculptor
Gaudi!
A mosaic of flowers
Crushed together,
Late summer skills
Gardening thrills!
It’s great how these bulbs become dormant after flowering, eventually the old leaves die down… Then they spring back into life when you water them about this time of year. Little and often is my way of doing it. Water but don’t drench. The bulbs swell, then suddenly a couple of leaves sprout, growing rapidly with a flower spike. I have kept one bulb for ten years. Each time it grows bigger. But don’t be eager to put it in a larger pot. It takes a few years, it likes being crammed in a pot. I only move them into the next size up pot. My oldest has grown a secondary bulb that also flowers….
It’s flowered. My Amaryllis is in flower. Bright red trumpets. Three big flowers.
There are two other plants, they have leaves, but no flowers. I hope they might still send up long stems with buds. I’m watering them, but it might not be till next year, then perhaps they will flower. Amaryllis like to be tightly packed into their pots, and so I don’t re-pot them until they have started to outgrow their pots. The one that is flowering is over ten years old. It was a Christmas present from my mother. It has a second bulb growing next to it, and when that gets large enough I may try and dislodge it and grow it in a new pot.
I do think they have possibly been overfed this year. When I have fed my orchids I have given any spare water with food in it, to the amaryllis plants. Usually I don’t bother to feed them. They do seem to have put on a lot of leaves so perhaps that is why they are not flowering as well as normal.
X
My Amaryllis plants are coming into leaf again. They die back after flowering and being in leaf over the summer and autumn. I generally leave them to dry off for a couple of months, then start watering them again about now. The leaves emerge and then the flower spike from the large amaryllis bulb. They prefer to be tightly fitting in their pots. One of mine is about ten years old and has grown another bulb next to it. I love the large flowers, they are always brightly coloured. As you water the plants and the leaves and watch the flower spikes grow, you can almost see them expanding by the minute. If you got one at Christmas don’t throw it away when it dies back, keep it and water it next December or January, you should be lucky and get new flowers x
Wife. You left the hose on last night.
Husband. Did I?
Yes,
Well the garden needed a water.
You’d left it in the pond.
Oh
It’s overflowed.
Oh, but it’s OK
How do you know?
Why?
Have you looked?
Well no……
You know the waterlily
Yes
I found it under the hedge.. and..
? And
And the Canadian pond weed
Yes?
It was by the summerhouse.
Is that it?
No
What else?
The floating fountain had flushed down to the folly.
There’s something you are not telling me?
Yes?!
What?
The goldfish.
The goldfish?
The goldfish!!!
What’s happened to them?!
I found them inside your wellies. The cat was trying to fish them out.
Oh, that’s OK then!
I have 4 Amaryllis flowers growing this year. The bulb sends out a long shoot after it starts to grow leaves. This flower spike will grow rapidly as long as it gets plenty of water. There can usually be 1 to 4 flower buds. All my Amaryllis plants have deep red flowers but they do come in other colours.
We got another plant in a deep glass vase which was in flower. Now the flower stem has gone over (died back) but its putting out leaves. I have two more plants that I have kept for years. One still has a long leaf on it from last year. Both are responding to being watered by starting to come into leaf again.
A tip, Amaryllis go dormant for a while from autumn. You need to start watering again mid winter to get them to start to grow. If you need to repot them only go up one size. They like to be quite tight in their pots. Use a good house compost, maybe a bit sandy to stop them getting waterlogged. Then sit back and enjoy the amazing flowers.
Mallaband-Brown