Amaryllis recycling

You too can get Amaryllis to bloom year after year and begin to add new plants to your collection. I have said this to many people but never actually tried it myself. Getting you Amaryllis to re-loom has to be among the easiest thing to do in the garden. Last spring, we let the flowers fade away and then cut off the flower stalks. We fed the plants regularly from bud to bloom right through to the time we placed them outside in a pile of leaves, pot and all. Then we ignored them until the rains stopped in the middle of the summer, when we occasionally recalled that the bulbs in their pots were partially hidden in the decomposing pile of leaves, and added water. On or around October 1st, we put the plants under a porch and stopped watering; when the leaves began to soften and wilt, we cut them off. We had expected them to turn brown, but I suppose it was not quite as dark as I thought. We left them under the porch until Thanksgiving when we brought them into our cool basement and forgot about them. Around the middle of December, we say sign of life and quickly re-potted the bulbs in new potting soil,removing the young bulblets which we potted together in new pots. Do not bury the bulbs rather plant them about half way into the soil, just deep enough to hold them upright We brought the plants into our sunny garden room, cool at night warm in the day, and began to feed with the plant food de jour, following the directions of course.

What can I say, but that you can do this with my assurance that it is less work than the time and money needed to get into your car and buy new bulbs. I figure that I spent a total of ten minutes on this project for the entire year.

If you have additional tips, or just a question, leave a comment or write to me at ipetrus@msn.com. And yes, those are re-cycled geraniums which spent last year in pots outside and will return to their decorative summer time positions after the danger of frost has past.

Happy Gardening!