Survival Skills

Amaryllis ‘Gervase’

I don’t know what just happened, but I blinked, and September was over. We have less than a week to go until October. Insane.

Same thing happens every year at this time: the amaryllis obsession begins, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Today, I just ordered a jumbo (38+ centimeter) ‘Gervase’ amaryllis bulb from Royal Colors, a new Holland-based bulb source for me. It will ship in a couple of weeks.

‘Gervase’ is a newer variety, a rich pink veined in white and palest green. These large bulbs promise three scapes with four flowers per scape. It’s a $24 investment – a lot of money for one bulb, but if all goes well, it will give us years of winter beauty. I’m mad bout amaryllis.

Tonight, I’m going to pull all our amaryllis bulbs out of their pots, trim off the roots, leave the leaves intact, and lay them in their sides for a couple of weeks in a cool spot. The bulbs will draw in whatever energy still lives in those long, green, strappy leaves, and the leaves will brown and die. I’ll clip off the dead leaves, place the bulbs in the coolest part of the basement, and let them rest in dormancy for 8 to 10 weeks.

Then it will be time to re-pot the bulbs in fresh soil, give them a light watering, and place them in a bright window. A few weeks after that, they’ll begin to stir – signs of life will appear, and sometime in mid-winter, they’ll bloom. I love this life cycle of amaryllis.

The bulbs I buy now will bloom by Christmas. Some will stay with us for many seasons, others will shrink and stop producing, and some will develop disease and die. The ‘Gervase’ I bought today, being a strong cultivar and the product of years of loving kindness, will probably be with us for many life cycles. The cheap $5 bulbs I grab at the market will bloom nicely but struggle to make a comeback next year. You get exactly what you pay for with amaryllis bulbs.

Last weekend, I bought bags of hyacinth, daffodil, and tulip bulbs, wrote the date on the bags, and placed them in the fridge. In January and February, I’ll pull them out, pot them up, and place them throughout the house. The bulbs will sprout and stretch toward the sun and bloom in the bottom of winter. For a few dollars every year, they give us a lot of joy.

All this is my way of surviving winter. Amaryllis has been there for me for decades. Every year at about this time, I get completely psyched about them. My husband very generously looks the other way when I pluck $24 from the budget for a single bulb. I think he knows it’s an investment in my sanity and hence, our marriage.

Last Saturday, he took down the food gardens and plowed the remains into the ground. Green compost for next year’s gardens. We have no more food growing, other than potted herbs. All the attention now turns indoors. This is the time each year when I dream of a big, commercial-style greenhouse, warm and welcoming on the coldest days, where I can scratch the unending itch to help plants along to their greatest potential. Someday. In the meantime, I’ll putter with bulbs and wait for seed catalogs to arrive. It’s hunker-down time.

Barbie xo