For decades our catalogues carried a page of bulbs timed to open indoors on Christmas Day, and not one of them needed a greenhouse. Three things do it, and they behave so differently that the only thing they share is the date they are aiming at. Knowing how to grow amaryllis is no help at all with a hyacinth: one needs ten weeks of warmth, one needs ten weeks of cold, and one needs neither.
When Should You Plant For Christmas Flowering
Work backwards from Christmas Day and the dates fall out on their own. Amaryllis want about ten weeks from planting to flower, which puts them in a pot during October. Prepared hyacinths need roughly ten weeks somewhere cold and dark and then about three more indoors, so they go in at the end of September. Christmas narcissi are the quickest of the three and the least trouble.
Hyacinths are the fussy one, because the timing shifts with the variety. Pink Pearl wants ten weeks cool and then twenty two days inside, while others are ready a fortnight ahead of that on exactly the same treatment, which is a real gap between two bulbs that look identical in the bag. Check what you have actually bought.
Which Amaryllis Should You Choose
Choose by the shape of the flower before you choose the colour, because shape is what decides how the pot reads from across a room. The large single trumpets are the ones most people picture, four big flowers to a stem on something like Giant Amadeus or Benfica, and they are the safest choice for a first amaryllis.
Doubles go in the other direction entirely. Double Dragon and Marilyn pack in so many petals that the trumpet outline disappears altogether, and a good double bulb will throw two stems or more rather than settling for one.
The third group is the one people miss. Tres Chic and Minerva carry up to six medium sized florets on a stem instead of four large ones, which suits a smaller room, and Papilio is barely the same plant at all, evergreen and orchid shaped, greenish white striped with burgundy, flowering again year after year once it has settled.
Do All Amaryllis Flower In Time For Christmas
No, and this is worth reading the descriptions carefully for. Some are bred to open for Christmas and the new year, Tres Chic, Charisma and Lemon Star among them, while others including Giant Amadeus, Marilyn and Dancing Queen naturally come in during January and February.
That is a feature rather than a fault once you plan for it. Potting a few of each in October gives you flower from the middle of December right through to the end of February, and a January amaryllis arrives when there is nothing else in the house worth looking at.
Why Does My Amaryllis Have Leaves And No Flower
Almost always because of what happened to it last summer rather than anything you have done since. Failure to flower usually comes down to drying the bulb off too early, keeping it somewhere too shady, or letting it go short of water through the previous summer. The flower for this Christmas was built last July.
A first year bulb that gives only leaves is a different matter and usually means it was too small to begin with. Circumference is what decides how many flowers an amaryllis can carry, which is why the big grades throw two stems of four flowers each and the cheap ones throw one thin stem and a lot of strap.
How Do You Get An Amaryllis To Flower Again
By treating the leaves as the point rather than the flower. Cut the spent flower spike down to the base as soon as it is over but keep every leaf growing, because those leaves spend the next six months building the bulb that flowers next Christmas.
Then give it a summer outside, because how to grow amaryllis for a second year is really a question about June and July. Stand the pot out once the frosts have finished, somewhere with shade from the fiercest sun, water it regularly and feed it weekly with a balanced liquid feed right through to September. This is the step almost everybody skips and it is the one that does the work.
In late September, stop. Cut the feeding, cut the watering right back, and let it rest somewhere cool at about 13°C for eight to ten weeks, or simply let it dry out in a garage for a month or two. Then start again. A bulb that never rests will never flower.
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How Much Water Does An Amaryllis Need
Far less than people give it at the start. Water sparingly until the new leaves appear, because until there are leaves there is nothing drawing water up and a wet bulb in a warm room simply rots. Once the leaves are going, water properly and do not let the compost dry out.
The saucer is where most amaryllis are killed. Water standing underneath keeps the base of the bulb permanently wet, which is precisely the condition that rots it, so tip the saucer out after every watering. Moist compost, dry saucer.
What Is A Prepared Hyacinth
It is an ordinary hyacinth bulb that has been through a temperature treatment to bring its flowering forward, and it is not something you can substitute. The bulbs are lifted earlier than the rest of the crop and then held at controlled temperatures that advance the flower embryo inside, so the bulb arrives already convinced that winter has been and gone.
Bulbs have been prepared this way since the beginning of the last century, and the method has been refined a great deal in the years since. That is also why properly prepared bulbs are never ready before early September, and why they cannot honestly be had any earlier than that.
Can You Use Ordinary Hyacinths Instead
You can force them, but not for Christmas. An untreated hyacinth has not had the temperature treatment that advances the flower, so it needs longer in the cold and will come into flower in late January or February however early you start it off.
That is worth knowing rather than worth avoiding. A pot of ordinary hyacinths started in October and brought in after New Year gives you flower in the gap when the house is at its dullest, which is arguably better value than another pot in December.
How Long Do Hyacinths Need In The Dark
Eight to ten weeks somewhere cold and dark, ideally around 9°C. A shed, a garage, a cold frame or a north facing corner outside will all do it, and the point is not the darkness for its own sake but a steady cool temperature that lets the roots grow before the top does.
Bring them in when the shoots are four to five centimetres tall and there are roots showing at the drainage holes. Not before. A pot carried into a warm room with no root system underneath it produces the short, floppy, half opened flower that people usually blame on the bulb.
Why Do Forced Hyacinths Flop
Because they came into the warm too soon, or into too much of it at once. A hyacinth moved straight from a cold shed onto a mantelpiece gets a shock, and the stem stretches before the flower is ready, which is what gives you the long weak neck that folds over.
Move them in stages instead. A week somewhere cool and bright first, then the warm room, and the stem stays short and thick enough to hold the flower up. If one does flop, a short cane and a bit of raffia is no disgrace.
Do Paperwhites Need A Cold Period
No, and that is the single most useful thing to know about them. Unlike hyacinths they want no cold and no darkness at all, so they go straight onto a warm bright windowsill and flower in six to ten weeks. That makes them the ones to plant if you have left it late.
They are the most forgiving of the three in a warm house. Christmas narcissi want moving into full light on the first of December and will carry on from there, and because there is no cold stage to get wrong the main risk is simply forgetting to water them.
Which Christmas Narcissi Should You Grow
Paper White Ziva if you want the least possible trouble, because it needs no cold period and is the easiest of all the indoor narcissi. Grand Soleil d’Or is the one to grow for scent, deep yellow with a rich orange gold cup, and it will fill a room from December into January.
Erlicheer is the double, seven to nine ivory and primrose florets crowded onto every stem and heavily scented with it. Tete a tete is the odd one out, a proper dwarf garden daffodil rather than a tazetta, so it wants somewhere cool and bright after potting rather than a warm windowsill.
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What Else To Pot Up For Winter
Something that flowers after they do, because the mistake is potting everything up at once. Prepared hyacinths and paperwhites are over by the middle of January, and a windowsill that carried four bowls through December then has nothing on it at all until March unless you thought about that back in October.
Three things carry it on and none of them needs preparing. Ordinary garden hyacinths potted in October and given a long spell in the cold and the dark flower indoors in late February and March, well behind the prepared ones and every bit as strongly scented. Dwarf narcissi in a bowl come in at about the same time. Dwarf iris are the smallest and earliest of the three, and they want a cold bright sill rather than a warm room.
Then hold a second amaryllis back rather than starting them all together. One potted at the beginning of December opens at the end of January, which gives you the whole performance a second time in the month the house is at its dullest.
What To Do After Christmas
Hyacinths and narcissi go into the garden, the amaryllis stays in its pot. Forced hyacinth bulbs will never force a second time, but planted out once the leaves have gone over they recover within a year or two and then flower normally every spring.
Do not throw them away, which is what most people do. A prepared hyacinth that has been forced is exhausted rather than finished, and the same bulb that gave you a display indoors will be an ordinary garden hyacinth for years afterwards, which is more than a poinsettia manages.