Amaryllis bulbs: Bigger is better
In the North, growing tropical cultivars, consists of fussing over pots of flopping strap leaves for 11 months in order to enjoy a month of flowers.
Like Thalassa Cruso in her book "," I keep asking myself if amaryllis are worth the trouble. Last week, when I saw the plants of one of my Meals-on-Wheels recipients, the answer was an unambiguous 鈥測es.鈥�
Mr. E, my amaryllis grower, is a former nursery owner and farmer who, in his spare time, also played the organ for the local Methodist church. He鈥檚 91 now. The greenhouses and tractors are gone and his fingers are stiff, but his urge to grow things persists. To paraphrase Douglas MacArthur, old gardeners never die, they just relocate to the dining-room table.
Big bulbs, big blooms
Some of Mr. E鈥檚 bulbs came from a friend who didn鈥檛 think they were worth keeping once they stopped blooming. 鈥淚 babied them for three years,鈥� he said, and now those bulbs are the size of baseballs.
All his amaryllis are at least 36 inches tall and have flower stems the diameter of a garden hose. They鈥檙e ramrod straight, topped with blooms that measure up to 10 inches across. I鈥檝e never produced anything nearly as fine.
I鈥檓 a great believer in buying small trees and shrubs 鈥� they grow faster than larger ones and are less expensive 鈥� but when it comes to bulbs, bigger is better. You don鈥檛 have to order 鈥渕other bulbs,鈥� which run $30 and more each, but don鈥檛 be tempted by 鈥渂argain bulbs.鈥�
At a minimum, opt for 鈥渓arge鈥� bulbs, which are 11 to 12 inches (28 to 30 cm) in diameter; even better are 鈥渆xtra large鈥� bulbs, 12 to 13 inches (30 to 32 cm), each of which should produce two or three stems and at least a half-dozen flowers.
How to treat them
The bulbs you buy 鈥� they appear in the fall and into winter 鈥� have been treated to a period of modest cooling and rest, a practice known as 鈥渇orcing鈥� that tricks bulbs into flowering early. When you get your hands on them, they already contain miniature leaves and flowers and the food they need to sprout and flower. They鈥檙e just waiting water, light, and warmth.
There are excellent for planting amaryllis bulbs and for getting them to flower again at the US National Arboretum website. may , but everyone emphasizes the importance of giving plants as much sun as possible after they finish blooming; feeding and watering regularly; allowing leaves, no matter how ugly, to die back completely; and giving plants at least six weeks rest in a cool location.
It鈥檚 a bit of work to keep amaryllis blooming year after year, but, properly handled, bulbs will be the size of softballs in three or four years. And will turn your dining-room table into a garden.
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Karan Davis Cutler blogs regularly at Diggin鈥� It. She's a former magazine editor and newspaper columnist and the author of scores of garden articles and more than a dozen books, including 鈥淏urpee - The Complete Flower Gardener鈥� and 鈥淗erb Gardening for Dummies.鈥� She now struggles to garden in the unyieldingly dense clay of Addison County, Vt., on the shore of Lake Champlain, where she is working on a book about gardening to attract birds and other wildlife. To read more by Karan, click here.
