Amaryllis Part 3 - Keeping an amaryllis after blooming

Amaryllis are easy bulbs to save for reflowering if you are interested in trying.

As your blossoms start to wilt, remove each dying flower with a sharp knife or clippers. Cut it off close to the stem, being careful not to damage the other blooms. The cut will ooze for a while, but this isn’t anything to worry about. 

Wilted amaryllis photo by Liz West under CC.

When all the blossoms are wilted, you need to cut back the flowering stem to about 2-4” tall, but don’t cut any of the leaves. As with tulips, daffodils and other bulbs, the leaves make food that is stored in the bulb before it goes dormant. As I said in an earlier post, this is like a bear eating and storing energy, so it can survive a long sleep. 

The cut flower stem will ooze sap for a while and will turn brownish all the way to the bulb over a couple of weeks. This is normal. While it is green, it will continue to make food like the leaves.

Treat the leaf-only plant as any other house plant at this point. Put it in a bright, preferably sunny, window. Water it when the top 1” is dry and use a dilute water-based fertilizer at about ½ strength.

If you have a garden, you can plant the bulb in the ground when there is NO danger of frosts – maybe early summer. Harden it off, meaning ease it into being outside, by keeping it in a mostly shady location for a few days and gradually giving it more sun. It will not take our intense sun without damage to the leaves, so plant it where it will be mostly shaded from noon onward. If you don’t have a garden, you can move the pot outdoors but again, not in full sun here in the west.

In either case, water it deeply every so often because the roots are deep, not close to the surface like petunias or even most perennials.

In the fall or after the first frost has damaged the leaves, carefully dig it up, loosen and remove all the soil. Cut off the leaves just at the top of the bulb and bring it inside. Let it dry out for a day or two. If you have kept it as a houseplant, stop watering it in the fall, and cut the leaves off when they have died.

Store the bulbs in the dark in a cool place, like your basement (but not your refrigerator, since it is too cold) for about 2 ½ months. The bulbs need this long storage at a cool temperature of 50-55° for about 10 weeks in order to bloom again.
 
After that time, repot the bulbs or bring the potted bulbs back into the light and start again. If your bulb sends up only leaves and doesn’t rebloom, it’s likely that it didn’t manage to store enough food reserves in its bulb. Another possibility is that the cold storage period wasn’t long enough, so make sure you give it the full 2 ½ months at about 50-55°.

Good luck, and let me know how your bulbs do!