So I think I’m an Amaryllis Farmer. Random I know, but a friend of mine in Washington, DC “farms” amaryllis in his office and I was totally fascinated with the process. He always had them at different stages on his windowsill and I thought they would make the perfect housewarming or hostess gift.
He gave me some seeds which I brought back to Atlanta and did what I normally do with seeds/plants…I killed them. I mean not one of the probably 20 seeds he gave me took. I was very disappointed with my luck, but my friend assured me that this had happened to him and that the seeds were sometimes hit or miss.
Shortly after moving into our new home, I ended up finding an amaryllis bulb kit on sale at Target for next to nothing and planted it. The light in our new house makes it ideal to grow just about anything so I thought I’d give it another try. And a few months later my DC friend gave me a pot of seedlings as a gift that had already taken root.
The bulb I purchased finally ended up blooming into the prettiest flower, which made me super proud.
But then I remembered my friend’s collection of baby amaryllis and it made me want to try pollinating the flower to reproduce as many plants as possible. It turns out that it’s actually quite simple. I just used a toothpick to rub some of the pollen on the stigma and then waited for nature to take its course.
In a couple of weeks the seedpods grew and eventually exploded open, exposing hundreds of little black seeds.
After letting them dry out for about a week, I planted half of them in pellets in a mini greenhouse and the rest in little seedling pots.
Once they started to sprout into healthy offspring, I planted them into various pots and began the wait. Now I have my own windowsill full of plants. Being an amaryllis Farmer takes a great deal of patience as it takes over four years to grow a flowering bulb from a seed. Wish me luck.
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