Growing Amaryllis - What's Hot!

Classic red and white amaryllis with spectacular color and vibrancy have always been part of the natural way to adorn your home for the holidays. But move over ‘Merry Christmas,’ 'Apple Blossom,' and ‘Wedding Dance.’ Make way for some hot varieties recently off the research benches and some new ways of using these unbashful blossoms.

With one of the largest Hippeastrom amaryllis collections in the United States, Van Engelen in Bantam, Connecticut, carries 53 varieties of Amaryllis from South Africa and the Netherlands.

“Amaryllis is one of my favorite topics because earlier in the fall I have a very strong nesting desire to clean up the gardens, get them ready for the winter,” says Jo-Anne van den Berg-Ohms, president, John Scheepers. “Once that is buttoned up, I turn my enthusiasm for gardening indoors. Amaryllis is one of the best flower bulbs for easy, lush and opulent blooms for winter.”

Van den Berg-Ohms is fourth generation in the family businesses: Van Engelen (wholesale flower bulbs and large retail orders), John Scheepers (retail flower bulbs), and John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds (vegetable, herb, flower seeds).

Her father Jan Ohms, CEO of all three companies, is from the Netherlands where, for generations, the family hybridized flower bulbs. When Jan Ohms came to the US after World War II, he and his wife created Van Engelen Company with the country’s first wholesale flower bulb catalog. Jo-Anne works with growers in the Netherlands to select varieties. She also develops the catalogs and collections along with her father.

Color, form and fragrance top the list in breeding trends.

Fragrance: Trumpet amaryllis with delicate, Easter lily-like blossoms
Varieties: white ‘Amputo’ and rosy pink ‘Misty.’ Van den Berg-Ohms describes their scent as “a pale fragrance of roses and raspberries.”

Form: double flamboyant varieties and species-like varieties.
Varieties: crosses with the double ‘Nymph’ to breed with different colors with perfect Nymph form. Exotic evergreen species-like Cybister varieties have slender leaves and flower petals. ‘Emerald’ is white and green with red striations and dots. Cybisters grow year-round.

Color: yellow, apricot-salmon, pink, and bi-color amaryllis
Varieties: new bi-color ‘Gervase’ is a pale to magenta blend with striations and red stamen and anthers. The pale yellow ‘Lemon & Lime’ is the best yellow on the market so far. The green and burgundy coloration of 'Papilio Improved' resembles an orchid.

Here’s how:

Potting: Use sterile, neutral pH soil in a cozy, heavy pot with an inch between bulb and container. Keep 20 percent of the bulb exposed above soil level so that water does not collect in the neck of the bulb and cause the base of the stem to rot. Water around the bulb. Use a heavy pot or put stones on soil to weigh down the pot.

Water: after the initial drink, let the sprout green up before giving it more water. Continuously watering a bulb just coming out of dormancy inhibits its root development. (Amaryllis naturally grow in a drier environment with well-defined rainy and dry seasons.) If the sprout doesn’t green up, kick-start it with bottom heat (radiator, heating pad, food warming tray).

Temperature: They pop out of dormancy in response to warmth, which promotes growth. Once it blooms, the cooler the environment, the longer it lasts.

Food: The bulb has everything it needs for its first growing cycle inside of it already.
Flamboyant display in a large, decorative container: Plant bulbs in individual pots, as above, then sink them in a decorative pot. They don’t necessarily come out of dormancy and bloom at the same time. If you grow enough plants, you can rotate them as desired. If you want a standing display and don’t mind that all of the bulbs are not blooming at the same moment, then a mass planting in a large pot is fine.

Saving the bulb for next year: After it blooms, deadhead, and grow the foliage into a big plant. Bring indoors at beginning of July and put where you will not water or see it. Lack of water is key to return it to dormancy. Do not cut the foliage even when it disintegrates. At end of October, bring the plant out again and then cut off dead foliage. Give light feeding of dilute houseplant fertilizer. Do not break roots; refresh soil with sterile potting soil (not soilless mix).