My wife is reading Long Covid news to me. Yikes! Quickly, make some bread, post about flowers, I don’t know… Something!
If you’ve been following my @kensanata account, you know that I love to post pictures of our Hippeastrum flowers (they are sold as Amaryllis but are in fact Hippeastrum). Every now and then I hear that people buy them in winter and throw them away when they finish blooming. Whaaat? Please don’t!
pictures of our Hippeastrum flowers
If you kept them for a year and they didn’t flower the next: my impression is that if you repot them them or otherwise disturb them, there’s a chance that they won’t flower the next year. Have patience. And keep in mind that the best solution to all that is to have a ton of them. 😆
There is no need to repot them just because they don’t have a lot of space in their pots. They like it close and cosy. Repot them when they’re practically squeezing out of the pot, or when they’ve split off smaller bulbs that don’t have space to grow.
When the blossoms wither, cut them off. When the stalk has no more blossoms, cut it off at the base. If you don’t, it will all wilt away anyway, so this is purely an aesthetic choice.
If you’re into it, you can of course get a soft brush and pollinate the plants (assuming you have multiple bulbs from different sources). In that case you don’t cut off the blossoms and leave the stalks, of course. After three weeks or so you might get some seeds! I did this once, many years ago, and remember getting maybe two dozen seeds in all. More than I was willing to plant!
As for general care: after blooming, they need to recharge their bulbs. That requires air, water, nutrients, and sunlight. Keep them outside when it’s warm enough. I just check the local weather report and as long as night temperature doesn’t drop below 5°C they can stay outside. So they’re outside in summer. Now’s the time to provide them with some nutrients, too.
We keep them on the shadow balcony since they don’t need super direct bright sunlight and they’re not very beautiful when they’re not blooming. They can stay in the shade and regain their strength. Also, when we had them on the sunny balcony, some of the leaves began turning red and that’s a sign of sunburn.
Watch out for tiny snails on your plants. Those are the only critters that seem to harm them. Not surprisingly, since they are poisonous. Keep the plants away from your kids and pets!
To get them to bloom, the bulbs need to spend a few weeks in a cool and dark place. As temperatures start to drop, cut off all the leaves and take them into your cellar, a cool stairwell, put the pots in a brown paper bag or cover them some other way. Leave them there for six weeks. You can leave them for more, but but check every now and then. If the leaves start reappearing, it’s time to move them back up.
Bring them back up and start watering them very sparingly. If you give them a lot of water, they’ll grow fast, with heavy leaves that break off and fall over, and maybe they won’t bloom. Do it sparingly, wake them up slowly.
A month later you should have flowers again. If you find that the flowers are so big that the pots are in danger of falling over, use sticks and ropes and tie them to stuff to prevent them from toppling over.
Anyway, our time table: move them to the cellar in October/November; move them back up in December; see the first ones bloom in January. 😀
If you have a lot of pots, which you might have after a few years as the bulbs start splitting, you can spread the dates around: when temperatures start dropping, start moving the first pots to the cellar. Move some more every weekend. Label the bags with a date! After six weeks, start moving the pots back up again. Every week, you’ll have more flowers and if you’re lucky, you’ll get new flowers all throughout winter.
Truly, these are fantastic, beautiful plants, easy to care for, and a joy to behold at a time when your soul might need it the most. I know I do.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
A month later, the first flowers are about to open.
A month later, there's always something going on.
As blossoms wither, cut them off.
When the last blossom is gone, cut the stalk.
This is my wife’s home office. 😀
#Hippeastrum #Plants
