Amaryllis flowering during 2015

Amaryllis flowering during 2015

My Amaryllis are getting started on flowering in earnest during February 2015. I had one red Amaryllis flower for a few weeks during January. Another one had a scape tall enough to warrant moving it into the living room from its place on our bedroom windowsill.

This 1st one of 2015 is pure red:

ALL my Amaryllis plants come from my own fertilization of my own bulbs in 2007. In 2001 I bought 3 bulbs, one pure red, one pure white & one a red with white stripes. In the spring of 2007 while they were in flower I decided to try my hand at cross fertilizing them. The resultant seeds I sowed a few months later & they germinated like Mustard & Cress! I ended up with an embarrassing amount of seedlings that I didn’t know what to do with! I decided to plant them up & grow them on. Four years later, in April 2010, they finally flowered!

Since then I’ve got the majority of them to flower every year. Many have produced offsets which I have potted up & they in their turn have also flowered & made baby bulbs as well! I’m now showered under with all the plants I have.

Anglo-American Hybrids

To make things even worse about 3 years ago I received some Amaryllis pollen from a lady in the USA. I had no idea she was sending me it till the day it arrived at my flat! She hadn’t asked me if I’d like some or warned me before hand & so it came as a complete surprise, out of the blue! Anyway I used some of the pollen to cross fertilize some of my plants that had flowers open at that time. A few took & started to produce seed but after a few weeks they died. The couple of plants that did produce seed produced so much I tried to give it away – without much success. I send some of the seeds back to the lady who had sent me the pollen & others I sowed myself.

The seeds I sowed I called ‘Anglo-American Hybrids’ & these have now been growing for 3 years, I think, so I’m not expecting them to flower this year. It normally takes Amaryllis 4 years to flower from seed. I therefore don’t expect them to flower till next year.

I have at least 20 of these ‘Anglo-American Hybrid’ bulbs!:

Amaryllis February 2015

Here are a few photos of my Amaryllis flowering away on our living room table:

8 inch blooms:

I had 4 Amaryllis plants blooming on our living room table on Valentine’s Day 2015! The flowers are HUGE – I measured them on a couple of plants & one, white with red veining, has 8inch flowers! Another one, Red with white star, has 7″ flowers. It’s practically impossible to take photos of the tape measure across the flowers as they reflex a bit & at least 2 hands are necessary to straighten them out enough to take a photo – but I need a third to take the photo!

These plants are my own seedlings, grown from my own cross fertilized seeds at home. They have no names & I can only identify them by colour. Looking on Facebook, where I’m a member of 3 Amaryllis groups (one in Spanish), I see some of mine look very similar to named hybrids!

On the windowsill in our bedroom there are another 5 or 6 with scapes which I will bring into the living room when they start to show colour. The same in our 2nd bedroom where there are another 7! In our kitchen window there are several more as well! So I shall have lots more Amaryllis flowering all through March & into April! :-))

Valentine’s Day 2015 accident:

Unfortunately the 2nd of 2015 had an accident! My wife & I were trying to move the pots further back on the table so we could use it for our meal but as I was moving this one it tipped over as it was very top heavy. Trying to grab the flower stem before it hit the table it hit the side of my hand & the head of four flowers broke clean off! It was just above the top of the cane I’d put in to hold the stem upright. ;-((

I rushed into the kitchen & found a big, old coffee jar & filled it with water into which I put the broken head of flowers. I then gave it to my wife & told her that even though I hadn’t bought her any roses for Valentine’s Day I could give her some rose coloured flowers at least! :-D)

Amaryllis 2nd of 2015 headless & now in a jar of water:

!http://media.growsonyou.com/photos/blog_photo/image/164930/main/Amaryllis_2nd_of_2015_headless_now_in_jar_of_water_14_02_2015_001.jpg!

Closer look:

In this last photo I’ve brought the 2nd & 5th together so you can appreciate the differences between the two plants:

The lower of the two is the one whose head was broken off. It has a white star in the centre & is a little lighter in colour. The petals form a more rounded flower than the one above it. The 5th one of 2015 is a little darker & the “star” has much longer, more pronounced white lines. The 3 petals that form a triangle are longer than in the 2nd one. This gives the appearance of a narrower star shape to the whole flower.

In the coming weeks there will be many more – perhaps lasting me through May!

Amaryllis – April blooms

Amaryllis – April blooms

Once again I have 3 Amaryllis plants flowering on the living room table! So far since the year began I’ve only gone about 2 weeks, if that even, without at least one bulb flowering on the table in our living room.

Amaryllis on living room table seen from where I sit at my computer:

Just today I brought 2 more plants into the living room. One came from our bedroom & the other from the kitchen. I took two that had finished flowering into the kitchen to put in the window a couple of days ago:

I still have a few more plants that have buds to bring in yet. So therefore I will have flowers into May – at least! Who knows if any more bulbs might flower before I take them down to the allotment in the middle of May.

In one of the pots I brought into the living room today I discovered another bud that is still only about 20-30cm high.

The bulbs that are flowering now are all different! The oldest of the 3 is mostly white with faint red stripes.

ALL of my Amaryllis are bulbs that I grew form seed I saved from bulbs I cross fertilized 7 or 8 years ago. The original bulbs were unnamed bulbs I bought in the 1st International Market held here in town for the first time in October 2001. I bought one pure white, one pure red & one red with white stripes. At first they each had individual pots but after a couple of years I planted the three bulbs altogether in one big pot. A couple of years later I decided to try fertilizing them to see if I could get viable seeds to grow my own bulbs.

Many years earlier I’d done the same in Spain. On that occasion the seeds never germinated. So I wasn’t overly convinced this time would be much different. I couldn’t have been more wrong! The seeds germinated like “Mustard & Cress”! I was embarrassed by the quantity that germinated! I ended up with at least 50 seedlings which flowered in their 4th year after sowing – that was 3 years ago! Now every year they flower & do it over a period of several months. I don’t do anything to “force” them to flower at a particular time – though I do know how to do it. I prefer them to flower when THEY are ready & not at Christmas for example.

A sister of mine was the one who started me down this road of growing Amaryllis back in 1982! She gave me a starter pack for Christmas 1981 which contained a bulb, a pot & saucer plus enough compost to plant the bulb up. I did so on Christmas Day 1981 & it flowered on February 26th 1982!

I was hooked! When we went to Spain later that year I took it with me & it loved the climate of Spain because it not only flowered profusely every year it also multiplied profusely as well! After a few years in Spain I bought a white Amaryllis & maybe a striped one, I’m not too sure about that though.

I haven’t gone a single year since that first bulb given to me by my sister without at least one, or more, of these lovely bulbs!

To cap it all a lady in the USA saw my flowers on another gardening forum I post on &, without consulting me first, sent me several tiny plastic bags with pollen from some of her own Amaryllis plants! I put some of the pollen on some of my plants that seemed to be ready for fertilizing to see if it might work. Several of the flowers were fertilized but only one plant ended up producing viable seeds. I sowed some of the seeds last year & sent the American lady some as well. I even sent a person in London some seeds. Those that were left over I sowed for myself!

Amaryllis: Anglo-American seedlings in our kitchen:

I refer to them as Anglo-American hybrids! Many of the seeds germinated & now I have two seedtrays with 15 little square black pots in each with a tiny bulb resulting from the cross:

There are also about 5 other of these pots that wouldn’t fit in the trays. So now I have another 35 Amaryllis bulblets! These will need another three years to reach flowering size! What am I going to do for space???!!!

We have 3 windows with windowsills in our flat & all three of them have pots stacked up to three high in some cases!

Amaryllis in kitchen window middle of January:

Amaryllis in kitchen window seen from the outside middle of February:

That’s not too much of a problem during the winter when most of the leaves have died down & they don’t block out too much light but once they finish flowering the leaves grow very long & with so many plants in the windows they shut out a lot of light.

Amaryllis in our bedroom window seen from the inside:

About the middle of May I take them down to the allotment where they stay till the middle of October when I have to bring them home again. I’ve done this for the past 3 years & will do it again this year!

Amaryllis 1st year on the allotment 31st May 2010:

As I discovered when I dug them up in October to bring them back home it was a very bad idea to plant them where the Daffodils were as the Narcissus Fly laid its eggs on the Amaryllis & the grubs burrowed into the bulbs eating out their hearts.

Therefore in 2011 I left them in their pots & put them on a makeshift bench where they spent the entire summer & no Narcissus Fly bothered them:

I did a similar thing in 2012 only I also used these mini-greenhouses we have behind the greenhouse. Again no problems with the Narcissus Fly!

About the middle of May I shall take all the plants down that have finished flowering for this year. They, too, will be kept far away from the Daffodils that are now beginning to flower outside Gerry’s shed on the allotment.

The October Plot

The October Plot

The October plot is quite a different plot from the September plot! It’s very noticeable that the days are hurrying towards their shortest time in December. Everything is shutting down now, the leaves are falling off the trees (time to collect them & compost them for leaf mould!) & most plants will have been harvested before the end of the month.

Talking about harvesting, here are a few photos of my harvesting results:

Beetroot Bolthardy just harvested:

I’ve now lost count of the number of times I’ve sown & harvested beetroot this year! I was even allowed to pull up some from the lady’s plot across the path. She said she had asked several other people if they would like some but they had plenty of their own! She happened to ask me at a time when I was between crops of mine.

Cucumber Marketmore just harvested:

I’ve been able to harvest quite a few cucumbers in spite of the powdery mildew that has covered them all growing season! I had greater success in the greenhouse than out on the plot! Does anybody know of a variety that is more resistant to this mildew?

Sweet Peppers harvested:

I am rather disappointed with the Sweet Peppers, these all came from the plants I grew from the seeds my wife brought me back from Spain last year. I’ve come to the conclusion that these Peppers are of a small variety & not like the big ones we get in the supermarket! Only a very few were longer & thinner the majority, as you can see in the photo are not much bigger than a thumb! These came from the bed of around 70 plants!

The Sweet Peppers in the photo below grew in the other half of the 3 Sisters’ bed. There were around 40 plants in this bed. There were less Peppers even though the plants looked stronger!

Sweetcorn harvested from 3 Sisters’ bed:

Gerry took these home but he hasn’t mentioned to me anything about them!

Sweetcorn F1 Incredible harvested:

I took these home but as I wasn’t able to cook them immediately I forgot about them in the fridge for a couple of days! I eventually got around to cooking & eating them – nothing much to say about them – perhaps as I didn’t use them earlier they had lost some of their sweetness. I’ve heard that Americans will even go so far as to take a pan of boiling water down to the plants & pop the cobs into the water within a minute of harvesting them!

Tomatoes Mallorquin from GH just harvested:

These came from the most ripe truss at that moment. I took them off to give the rest time to ripen a little more before the weather became too cold:

Here you can see how much just 1 truss weighed when I got them on the scales at home:

Tomatoes Self-sown from greenhouse:

How this plant got in here I’ve no idea! Obviously a seed came from somewhere & germinated in the soil between the concrete slabs that run down the centre of the GH & the plastic that covers the ground where I have the growbags with the tomato Mallorquin & the Cucumbers. It doesn’t look like any of the three varieties that Gerry & I grew last year. (Alicante, MoneyMaker & Gardener’s Delight).

Tomatoes Gardener’s Favourite harvested:

These Toms came from self-sown seed that somehow survived the winter in the soil. This was the only one to be harvested of the several plants that escaped my attention till they were too big to pull up (Yes, I’m a big softy at heart!). I spent much of the summer pulling up these weeds as they came up amongst my Sweet Peppers! The Sunflowers were just as bad as well! They kept popping up all over the place!

Tomatoes Mallorquin:

These were harvested from the GH a couple of weeks after those in the previous photo. As you can see it was well worth picking those before to let these ripen! I still have a couple of trusses more waiting to be picked.

Amaryllis Red with white stripe:

This was just waiting for my return from a 2 week absence from the plot! We went to visit my wife’s family & our 2 sons for 10 days & on my first day back on the plot, Sunday, just to water the plants in the GH, I noticed a red splash which on investigation turned out to be this Amaryllis! I hadn’t noticed the bud when I watered the pots with tomato fertilizer the day before leaving for Spain!

Fig tree:

Up until recently this Fig tree was hidden amongst the autumn fruiting Raspberries. While I was away it had grown a little higher & was now visible. No figs to pick though as the very late frost we had in May, coinciding with a similar trip to Spain, (only 4 days though),killed all the growth they had put on & last year’s brevas, as the immature figs are called, so nothing for this year. Hopefully we will get some for next year as new growth next year will be protected by fleece!

Lettuce Tom Thumb just planted out

It may seem strange to plant out Lettuce so late in the growing season, now coming to an end, but I noticed that last winter they survived the heaviest frosts we had as well as all the snow & ice. So I thought they will be able to survive a few light frosts as we were bound to have some warmer days before the real winter cold set in. What I didn’t expect was that we would have daytime temps around 13-15ºC at the end of October!

Peanuts:

I have no idea if Peanuts are frost hardy, I doubt it but my plants have survived the first very light frost we had on the night of October 14th! A frost forecast for the 21st didn’t happen! Phew! So these are still growing! I have no idea what size plants they normally make or if there are any peanuts in the soil beneath them. I’ll find out shortly.

Pinto & Garbanzo beans & Lentils:

These Legumes, as this family of plants is called, are still doing quite well. The Pinto beans are very susceptible to frost, more so than runner/green beans. The light frost of the 14th damaged many of the plants but didn’t kill them outright. The next day I made it my first duty to go around the plants & pick as many pods as I could. But I ended up pulling up the plants as it was quicker & I put them in the GH to dry off till I can open the pods & extract the beans. The plants mostly were no more than 6″ high & many of them were going over any way.

The Garbanzo beans (aka Chick peas) & the Lentils proved to be frost resistant last year so I’ve not bothered with those for the moment. Any way they are there more as green manure than as a crop to harvest. I found last year it was too much work to get a few beans & lentils. In comparison the Pinto beans are much, much more rewarding!

Sunflowers Tall at top of plot:

As you might imagine all the Sunflowers have now finished flowering & Gerry has even cut off dozens of seedheads for his birds. I started to pull up some of them but more than 3/4 of them remain. I haven’t pulled up any of the Mini sunflowers yet or the Little Dorrit ones. Gerry has harvested many of their seedheads as well. I’ve saved a few for my wife who likes to eat Sunflower seeds. A very popular pastime in Spain!

Tomato Mallorquin just harvested:

These are the last fruits of Tomato Mallorquin that had been growing outside in the soil just behind the shed. I picked them before a subsequent frost could damage them. I’m disappointed with this tomato as the fruits were small & very late in forming. Next year I’ll go back to the more traditional varieties of tomatoes. I think they need a GH to grow & fruit well. The one plant in the GH on the allotment has, eventually, produced much bigger fruits as well as better looking. Yet Gerry had a dozen plants in his GH at home & they were a disaster for him! I have 3 plants on my balcony at home; these have done better than the ones grown out in the open on the allotment but not as well as the one in the GH on the plot.

Carrots Autumn King before lifting:

Carrots Autumn King after lifting:

I was surprised to see the roots so forked! I’ve been told there are two main reasons why this should happen, 1: soil too rich/manure & 2: stony ground. Well the first certainly can’t be true as this bed has had no manure put into it in years as Gerry didn’t know of a place to get any till this year. As for stony, well this is more of a possibility, but I think a hard pan 3-4″ down is more likely. I dug this bed over after lifting the carrots & I encountered this hard pan a little way down.

Parsnips White Gem after lifting:

Much the same reason as for the carrots. I noticed months ago that the Parsnips were pushing out of the soil & some seemed to be growing on their sides. So I thought at the time that the bed had a hard pan a couple of inches down. Which proved to be the case.

Also this was my first time ever at growing either of these two crops. Advice on watering Parsnips & Onions changes according to who you ask! Some say they never water after watering when planting out while others say they water them like other crops! So confusing for a newbie!

Beetroots Bolthardy before lifting:

Beetroots Bolthardy after lifting:

I lifted these because I wanted to clear the ground & finish digging the bed over. There were in the same bed I planted up with Lettuce Tom Thumb. They also looked big enough to harvest & were unlikely to get much bigger even if I left them for a few more weeks.

I’m quite pleased with efforts of growing Beetroot this year as it is only my 2nd season growing them. I have one last bed at the very top of the plot but these won’t be ready to harvest for months I should imagine – if they are frost resistant, something I don’t know – yet!

Godetias at top of plot:

My wife likes these little plants a lot & most years I grow a few plants on the balcony for her. I also had a few this year but they didn’t do very well so I bought another packet of seeds which I sowed in a tray in the GH on the allotment. Unfortunately I could never seem to find the right moment to prick them out into pots to take home & put on the balcony. Eventually I decided to plant them out of the plot even though I wasn’t really expecting them to put on much of a show before the frosts killed them off. But it seems the warmer weather of late has saved them for the time being! As I’ve no photos of the view from the shed I’ve put this one on to end this instalment of the continuing saga of the allotment through the year!

Lots of photos for the last (probably) blog of the growing season on the plot. I may make up a last one sometime in November. I still have to make up one for Plot 12A!

Spring flowers on my balcony

Spring flowers on my balcony

I thought I would make a blog with the Spring flowers that are open on my balcony today. I’ve included a photo of the balcony as seen on coming up the short path to the entrance way. You will also find a couple of photos of one of my Amaryllis that I have grown from seed, this is it’s 2nd year in flower.

Here is what they looked like just under a month ago:

Hope you like these few photos of what is in flower on my balcony right now:
You can see below what my balcony looks like as you come up the entrance path to the entrance of our block of flats:

Here are a few photos of my Amaryllis that I have grown from seed:

Well that will do for now – I need to keep a few back after all! Hope you enjoy these photos of some of the wonderful plants that can be found in flower right this moment!