Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Amazing Amaryllis

The year 2011 had been difficult for me. I've been looking for a job since January. In summer I started a 6-month long course of treatment which made me very sick. By September things were not going well and the winter was coming. I resolved to have plants blooming at home all winter to have something to look forward to.

My favorite spring flower is tulip so I started forcing a whole bunch of tulip, crocus and muscari bulbs back in October. 12 weeks of chilling seemed to be a lot of time so I also got some "no-chilling" bulbs: paperwhites, iris reticulata and amaryllis to get the flowers faster.

The paperwhites are not coming back: they are bland, floppy and have a strange smell. Iris retuculata bulbs are sitting in the pots with 1-inch shoots for the last 10 weeks or so.
But amaryllis... Boy, are they gorgeous! I'm really not into lilies and lily-like flowers but these plants are impressive. I guess this is the essence of my gardening life: success and failure go hand in hand.

My first bulb, a presumably "Red Lion" amaryllis. It bloomed only 5 weeks after planting!


Amaryllis Red Lion



When a local garden center advertised 75% off amaryllis sale I grabbed some more bulbs including this amazing "Faro" variety. While the flowers seem to be on the shorter stems due to the bulb sprouting extensively in the store, there are 2 flower spikes with 7 flowers each!


Amaryllis Faro



So far I am firmly on track with my goal: have flowers in the house from Thanksgiving until spring.




3 comments:

  1. Thank you for joining my Google friends.
    Your amaryllis are very beautiful.
    I bought two amaryllis plants at our local supermarket on sale. Both bloomed for weeks. Hopefully they will bloom again. Please see my latest post.
    There is a new amaryllis available called Papillio - Butterfly Amaryllis. This very exotic looking plant came originally from the Amazon.
    Unlike the other amaryllis, this one is an evergreen.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you!
      The Faro amaryllis bulb grew a third (!) flower spike and is blooming again. The bulb itself seems to be shrunken and weary though

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  2. This brightened up my day! I love the color red and seeing the Red Lion Amaryllis almost instantly took my tiredness away. Thanks for sharing these with us.

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