Now that I have 4 plants waning and resting, or do they want to stay in leaf until they go outside? Or will they fade out, and can restart when they are replanted?
After the winter show is over, what gets kept?
Mine remain in leaf until I put them to sleep, into dormancy, in September.
Keep them growing through the summer -- the leaves will help them replenish their engery so they can rebloom again next blooming season. And if you can, it's good to leave the stalk on the plant until it has dried. This lets the bulb reclaim these nutrients, too.
Michelle
Thank you, Michelle. I'll just cut off the top to prevent it from going to seed.
Oh, right. If you don't want seeds, Yes, deadhead the flowers when they wither. But if you want to have some fun planting and growing amaryllis from seed, do not deadhead. :) But be warned, if you do get seeds, they take several years to grow before the bulbs are big enough to bloom.
Michelle
Then I just might allow one seed head per plant to develop. Thanks again.
Unless you hand pollinated them, you'll find the flowers may or may not self-pollinate. An be aware that even if a pod begins to swell, sometimes the pod aborts. Not sure why, probably many reasons. But if it makes it, you'll know the seeds are ready when the pod turns yellow and begins to split open. The seeds themselves are a very thin, papery, black seed. The viable ones have a little bump that you can feel between the papery layers. You'll want to plant them right away, barely covering them. They can take up to a month to germinate, so be patient. Keep the planting medium moist but not wet (when we plant seeds, we mist them a couple times a day).
Oh, and you should know that when they do finally bloom, they will not necessarily bloom true to the color of the bulb they came from. But, then, that's part of the fun! :)
If you want the color to be true, you'll want to take good care of any bulblets you get from the mother bulb. These will eventually grow large enough to produce flowers as well. I understand that you should get flowers from the bulblets quicker than from seeds.
Have fun! It's a great hobby :)
Michelle
I went through that when I hybridized daylilies for years, Michelle, and know what you get is often a huge surprise for good or not. It was fun but very time consuming as was the deadheading of the 1,364 daylilies we ended up with after planting more than 3,000 seeds. I don't think I'm ready for it again!
Hi, Pirl.
Wow! That's a lot of daylilies! I just have a few seedlings that made it from each of my amaryllis crosses. Six are from 2008, and six are from last year. I look forward to discovering what blooms we get when they are finally ready to bloom :)
Michelle
(1)Knight Star Lilies should not be neglected after the flowers are done. The most careful husbandry, that it includes regularly administering lukewarm water, AS APPROPRIATE (!!!) - including diluted liquid fertilizer (+0.3 to 0.45 g/L ALWAYS! not once a week or such), will reward you with bigger leaves ( = will lead to a bigger bulb) , additional leaves even ( = will lead to additional scapes in the following season), bulblets growing faster ( = will reach maturity after 2 seasons). And, the best care will not help you, if you disposed your Hippeastrums of(f) ("Oh, it is so unattractive without flowers") at a dark corner RATHER THAN reserving your best windowsill lines for your specimens. Heat from below, leading to a substrate temperature upto 26°Celsius is being thankfully appreciated, and speeds up growth. On the other hand, AIR termperatures should not be in the high range; 18 to 20°Celsius is by far enough. Higher Air temperatures indoors lead to soft, pale, watery, lengthy leaves that do not support themselves and become prone to premature wilting. Outdoors the light conditions are better - this makes a considerable difference.
(2)The other leftover, that it "gets kept" is them balcony boxes with lines on lines of young seedlings out of your most precious breeding projects. I am thrilled that I successfully created F2 in the strict sense of its meaning, crosspollinating my best two siblings from an F1 species crosspollination, H.cybister "Chico" x H.papilio. They are germinating - this is spectacular. I assume, that everybody, that has some experience with DIPloid Knight Star Lilies knows, that they are finicky when it comes to breeding, and they seem to like the idea, to DEFY breeders' efforts.