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| Photo Credit: Gerald Klingaman |
| In milder parts of the country, amaryllis can be grown outdoors as a spring-blooming bulb. |
The super-sized blooms of amaryllis (Hippeastrum) are hard to ignore. Every fall, stores are well-stocked with boxed amaryllis bulbs literally bursting at the seams, ready to grow. Though many may know amaryllis to be an indoor plant, in Zones 8 and south it can be grown outdoors as a spring-blooming bulb. And even though it’s not really a typical houseplant, we still let it hang around the house in the background, hoping it’ll rebloom to earn its keep.
Part of the reason amaryllis hooks so many gardeners onto the hobby is that they’re so darn easy to grow. The boxed bulbs come complete with an enormous bulb, oftentimes pushing up a bloom spike while still imprisoned in the box. The growth of the flower stem can be measured in inches-per-day, and before you know it, the blooms appear in wonderful shades of red, including pink and orange, as well as white and bicolors (white and one of the red tones). Sure, if the plant were grown in a warm, dark room you may need a broom handle to keep it propped up, but by golly it bloomed! | Add Photo to Journal |  | | Photo Credit: Gerald Klingaman | | Crowd several ‘Apple Blossom’ amaryllis bulbs together in a shallow bulb pot for greater visual impact. |
That first blooming is the easy one because bulb dealers have been storing the fat amaryllis bulbs just below freezing since early spring, awaiting the lucrative holiday season. Getting amaryllis to rebloom a second time (especially if you’re hoping to hit a particular date) is trickier.
Only expect amaryllis bulbs to bloom once per year, and only bulbs larger than 2 inches in diameter are large enough to bloom at all. The bulbs that flowered in midwinter of one year won’t rebloom until at least a year later. But because amaryllis are typically spring-blooming plants, they’re easier to force into bloom in the February-through-April period than the November-through-January period.
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