{"id":228,"date":"2010-10-25T04:00:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=228"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:58","slug":"ghosts-of-amaryllis-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/ghosts-of-amaryllis-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts of Amaryllis Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

GHOSTS OF AMARYLLIS PAST
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>This is the time of year when I generally order–or at least contemplate ordering–hybrid amaryllis or Hippeastrum bulbs for holiday gifts and home display.\u00a0 Though the most stalwart of the dahlias, roses, mums and asters are still flowering, hard frosts are just around the corner and the growing season is drawing to a close.\u00a0 It won’t be long before indoor plants will take center stage once again.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I think about my amaryllis order, I have to face the fact that there are three ghosts of amaryllis past among the crowd of vacationing houseplants on my back porch.\u00a0 They are last year’s holiday amaryllis, which I have watered and occasionally fertilized since they stopped blooming in December and January.\u00a0 While no longer the buxom beauties that arrived here last fall, they are still firm to the touch and have several long green leaves.\u00a0 I have high hopes that they will produce some flowers this year.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Most of us who are the slightest bit interested in growing winter flowering bulbs, have been taught that amaryllis require forced dormancy to stimulate rebloom.\u00a0 This is not strictly true.\u00a0 In the wild nobody puts species amaryllis in Stygian darkness twenty-four hours a day, carefully rescuing them after 8 to 10 weeks and reintroducing them to water and sunlight.\u00a0 The species plants that are the ancestors of modern amaryllis hybrids are hard-wired to slow their growth in the winter, but it does not stop completely.\u00a0 Therefore, reduced watering is probably all my hybrid amaryllis need to stay healthy and even rebloom.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, I will probably end up forcing dormancy anyway because I have never done it any other way.\u00a0 To prepare for this, I went down to check the available space in the Stygian darkness of my own cellar.\u00a0 As I rooted around, I noticed another ghost of amaryllis past–a pot of three bulbs that I had placed under the potting bench two years ago just after Labor Day.\u00a0 They have languished there ever since and at some point entered into eternal dormancy.\u00a0 When I found them I decided that excessive guilt would be a waste of time, so I dumped them in the compost, cleaned out the pot with bleach and will use it to pot up the more viable ghosts currently on the back porch.\u00a0 Let’s hope the bleach liberated the pot from bad amaryllis karma.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With or without forced dormancy, my ghosts of amaryllis past won’t bloom in time for the December holidays, so I will be ordering some new ones.\u00a0 My usual vendor has bulk packs of five unlabeled bulbs for a discounted price.\u00a0 I generally go with those, supplying my own pots and soil.\u00a0 With amaryllis as with other bulbs, generally the larger the bulb, the more flowers you will get.\u00a0 For years I thought my preferred vendor had the largest amaryllis bulbs in the industry, but now I see that I was wrong.\u00a0 Like the national debt and the size of fast food meals, amaryllis have gotten bigger.\u00a0 Earlier this week, I was trolling the aisles at one of the high end garden centers and saw a box of gigantic amaryllis bulbs–each one about the size of a baby’s head.\u00a0 The tags guaranteed three flower stalks instead of the usual two and the price was more than double what I will be paying for my somewhat smaller beauties.\u00a0 I decided twenty dollars per bulb was too much for an amaryllis and left the behemoths to others with more disposable income.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When my new amaryllis arrive, I will pot them up, put them on my crammed dining room window seat\/winter houseplant area and wait for them to sprout.\u00a0 The week before Christmas, I will dispatch them to friends and neighbors to provide some post-holiday brightness.\u00a0 After their departure, it will be time to rescue last year’s ghosts from the basement.\u00a0 This time, I will mark the date on the calendar to prevent forgetfulness.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Watching an amaryllis sprout and grow is like watching an ongoing miracle.\u00a0 Once the bulbs get started, the growth is so fast that sometimes you can almost see it.\u00a0 Watching a ghost of amaryllis past sprout is even more of a miracle–at least to me–because it means that the plant got through the end of winter, survived a summer outside, made it through dormancy and was rescued from darkness while life remained in the bulb.\u00a0 For some reason, I have never successfully rejuvenated an amaryllis for a third season of bloom.\u00a0 This is probably a good thing because it allows me to experiment with new colors and shapes.\u00a0 If I ever buy a twenty dollar bulb, my attitude may change, as paying that much transforms amaryllis from a small luxury into a significant investment.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amaryllis, either bare-root or in boxed gift packs, are available everywhere from now through the holidays and even beyond.\u00a0 If you want to order multiples of certain amaryllis at wholesale prices, try Van Engelen, 23 Tulip Drive, P.O. Box 638, Bantam, CT, 06750, (860) 567-8734, <\/font><\/font>www.vanengelen.com<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Van Engelen’s sister company, John Scheepers, <\/font>www.johnscheepers.com<\/font><\/a>, at the same address, features smaller bulb quantities.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GHOSTS OF AMARYLLIS PAST \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is the time of year when I generally order–or at least contemplate ordering–hybrid amaryllis or Hippeastrum bulbs for holiday gifts and home display.\u00a0 Though the most stalwart of the dahlias, roses, mums and asters are still flowering, hard frosts are just around the corner and the growing season is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}