How to care for an Amaryllis!
Buying a large sized, high-quality Amaryllis might seem like a pricey investment. But if you give a little bit of care to these flowers, they will come back and bloom year after year and can even multiply. I offer a variety of colors and only offer the largest bulbs I can find which results in more flowers per stalk, larger flowers, and more stalks per bulb.
Start here if you have a :DORMANT BULB (no signs of life or growth)
If you just got your bulb and it’s not growing you want to take it, put it in a very warm place (A drafty window sill is not ideal until it wakes up more and needs light) and give it a good drink-1 time! You don’t want the soil to stay so wet the bulb rots before it’s awake. Water and warmth are the keys here to jumpstarting growth.
Start here if you have a: BULB SHOWING GROWTH
Once you start to see green appearing you can start to water more regularly like every time the top inch of soil is dry, and you will want to move it to a place where it can get some sunlight. I keep mine in our bay window.
Keep it watered and it will grow and bloom. Sometimes they grow leaves and then bloom, sometimes they bloom and then grow leaves. As each stalk blooms you can remove individual flowers once they start to fade, and then cut the whole stalk at the base once all the blooms are spent. Do not trim off the foliage! This is extremely important for the bulb to be able to regenerate itself for the next year!
You are going to want to let that foliage grow for many months now. As in through the summer. Once all danger of frost has passed I frequently move mine outdoors for the summer until late August or early september. At this point I stop watering and let the soil completely dry out and the foliage die back. Once this has happened, I move the bulb into a dark cool (but not cold or below freezing) location, a basement usually works fine. I also know some people that just put their plants directly into the basement and let the soil dry out and the plant die back there.
The bulb needs to stay in this state of dormancy for at least 8 weeks, so if you start the process in August, you can rest your bulbs and then start pulling them out in October giving you the option for Thanksgiving Blooms if you have a fast blooming variety. You can also wait and wake them up later. I don’t start waking mine up until after Christmas because then they bloom in the deepest part of winter when I need the blooms most.
I hope this helped answer some of your questions regarding Amaryllis care. If you have any further questions please feel free to drop them in the comment section below!
