Category: bulbs

Our Amaryllis bulbs are just reaching the end of the blooming cycle so I thought I would throw a few pictures up while they were still in flower. Amaryllis (correctly known as Hippeastrums) make great houseplants if you have full sun. Many amaryllis will typically bloom in spring in the Northern Hemisphere, give or take a month. The reason you see so many in flower around the December holidays is because those bulbs have been specially prepared to bloom then. In fact, most growers assume that you must let your amaryllis to go dormant in the fall months so that they will bloom when awakened. Most of the species in nature do not go dormant — they are from tropical or subtropical regions and while they might enjoy cooler winter spells they grow continuously. So, you do not need to let your Amaryllis go dormant by withholding watering in the fall, unless you’re trying to orchestrate the blooming for the holidays, which is a different matter. You can read more about Amaryllis dormancy here.

To the contrary, amaryllis like to grow throughout the winter months, as ours do, in a bright sunny spot. Admittedly, they don’t grow that much during winter but most of the foliage is maintained and as soon as spring comes they have a head start on dormant bulbs. Once I started doing this, I found that my larger plants sometimes flowered more than once a year — in the spring and again in the fall! Typically, I get two to three spikes of blooms per bulb every year, and in some cases even more.

Link: Learn how to grow Amaryllis bulbs.

Glorisoa superba also know as a flame lily is an exotic lily from Africa that grows like a vine! I remember the flowers from my childhood in Africa–despite the abundance and diversity of blooms the gloriosa flowers with their upturned serrated petals always stood out. The fresh green vines grow all season, and will grab anything nearby-this makes them very easy to train up a trellis. In late summer, the vines mature and produce several blooms at the tip.

While not a typical houseplant, they can be grown in a bright sunny window in a loamy rich soil. I plant the tubers quite deep and scatter a timed-release fertilizer for flowering plants to encourage blooming. Then I keep the plant well watered when the vines emerge and let the plant do the rest. After blooming the vines will die down and not bloom again. In warmer climates they can be left to produce new vines. Otherwise, its best to dig them up and store them away for the winter.

While typically brilliant crimson and yellow, our turned out to be a cultivar with attractive salmon pink and yellow flowers. There are several other cultivars available including a yellow one. The tubers are inexpensive and generally available through bulb or garden catalogs in the spring

Its best to grow several tubers in a pot so that you have a nice cluster of blooms over several weeks as the plants mature, as show in the photo below; otherwise they can end up look quite spare. Be sure to use a large 10-12″ pot when you have several tubers planted up to give room for the roots to grow.

While I trained mine up several bamboo spikes, they would also make an architectural statement trained round a large hoop. The flowers change color as they mature providing visual interest along with the large dangling seed pods that form easily.