Light.......Meant to tell you a few days ago: The crinums have been repotted. They are in 12 inch pots now and have a whole potful of delicious, nutritious, fortified dirt! It was amazing to see their root systems. They LOVE to propogate their roots. One of them is completely buried in the soil. The other is just under the surface with the bulb's neck visible. How much does this matter?
Also, I pulled out the amaryllis along with everything else in the cellar. They didn't mind 'sleeping' the whole winter long at all. One of them is sending up a floral stalk. Not sure about the other which is a 'maybe' right now. Around here, an amaryllis is always planted half way into the soil. They are always in pots. This may be to avoid a rot issue. Do you bury them when you plant them out side? I'm wondering if they could be buried in the pots. I'm thinking the flowers would have more stability if the bulb was sunk into the soil. If this works, and it looks as if it will, I could have amaryllis blooming in my yard each year. If they come after the irises and before the day lilies, it would be a very nice feature in my garden.
Sound like you are having good success with both :) I just had a few crinums bloom for me last week... but the amaryllis show I normally get every spring didn't get. I'm thinking it may be late like the rest of the flowers this spring since we had such a long, cold winter and the rains are just now starting, which is also late for us. Right now, my garden is loaded with white Easter lilies in bloom :)
Now, as for your questions, LOL... Yes, I generally plant them with the bulb completely in the ground. After a while, it appears that the amaryllis will either grow a little above the surface or the rains beat the soil away from the top a little, exposing maybe about 1/2 inch of the very top of the bulb but the rest of it remains underground. Maybe they plant them above ground up there because your ground is so cold? I would think with them in the pots, you could go ahead and put them under. Give it a try...
They sound quite beautiful! Re the pots, I'm sure that would work very well. My father was a wonderful gardener and used to have most of his bulbs, including daffodils and tulips in large pots. He'd overwinter them in the closed carport and 'plant' them out in the pots as soon as they started to come up and it was warm enough in the spring. He always had the first spring flowers and everyone wondered how he did it. The other advantage was that he could just lift out the pots as soon as the flowers faded, not having to wait until the foliage died back. That way, he could get the next set of flowers in and blooming too.
several days for me... and usually the plant will send up 2 stalks which bloom in stages so I get about a week from the one plant. Mom got them from Grandmother's yard in NC so they are somewhat cold worthy at least :)
-- Edited by light on Saturday 29th of May 2010 07:09:39 PM
It will be interesting to see how they do in the 12 inch pots. With the amount of roots that they have and also their leaf length, the crinums strike me as something which wants a lot of space. I'm not sure the 12 inch pots are large enough to make them happy.
