Experimenting with Amaryllis Flowers

The bulb of an Amaryllis (Hippeastrum spp) flower.

Last winter, my sister was given a big bulb as a gift. Not a light bulb, but a flower bulb in a tiny decorative pot with a tag saying "Amaryllis" on it.  She gave it to me to see if I could grow it and the experiment began. 

I started, as I always try to do, with a little research first.  I looked up Amaryllis to see what it was as I wasn't familiar with it already.  I discovered that it is a native of the tropical and subtropical areas of South America, which doesn't usually bode well for trying to grow it in the Mojave Desert and I don't recommend it as a rule.  But it was only one bulb and it was a gift, so I figured it could be fun to give it a try.  I didn't expect it to do well, not even in the house, since even the house humidity doesn't get very high. 

But then I looked further and found that it's native plant community wasn't a rain forest jungle or anything like that, but rather the plateaus and savannas that are also in parts of South America in the higher elevations.  Those places have cool, somewhat rainy winters and rather warm, dry summers, so it looked slightly more hopeful for our new patient. 

So, we planted it, but kept it in the house in the sunniest room, which turned out to be the wash room with it's South facing door that has a window in it and occasional rises in humidity thanks to the washer and dryer.  It also didn't get too warm in that room since it doesn't have a heat register in it. So, it worked out that we were able to kinda mimic the winter conditions this plant developed under as we gave it occasional water.  I planted it in a terra cotta pot (the best choice for most plants really) with a cactus potting soil mix that has high drainage, low organic matter and no added fertilizer as I knew that such places in the wild are rather harsh environments.  Plants adapted to living in rocky or sandy soil with extended dry periods are actually harmed by babying them too much with really moist, rich soil. 

Amaryllis sends up flower stalk before any leaves elongate.

As you can see in the picture above, we did our best to prevent the roots from getting waterlogged by putting the pot on a plant stand but with the drip tray below the stand to keep water from being absorbed back into the soil.  This is also critical when watering with our local water supply that is high in salts. 

Amaryllis is interesting in that it is among those plants that seems to take forever to do anything with its bulb after it is planted (we planted it with the top half sticking up out of the soil as my sources - several websites by university horticulture departments recommended).  Then, just when you begin to think nothing will happen, the bulb splits open at the top and a green spear emerges!  This develops into the flower stalk and eventually, you see leaf tips emerging from the bulb below it.

 

 

Once it got started, it really took off! Now there are two flower stalks.

  The Best place to put our patient wound up being right in front of the air intake vent for the HVAC system, so the plant also got a nice light 'breeze' from the air being drawn in past it every day.  We also put it on this tv tray to keep it up away from the coldest parts of the drafts when someone would open the door that winter. It also kept it from getting knocked over accidentally by passersby.  It looked like this with its big, green spears for several weeks before it showed us why my sister's friend gave it to her....

Isn't it glorious! Soon, there were three spears, each with three of these huge flowers!

Suddenly, our curious green speared thing was a thing of amazing floral beauty!  It began growing these enormous (the size of my palm) flowers as you can see from this picture of the first bloom above.  They had a very pleasant aroma, smelling like really expensive perfume. Some of the scent even went in the HVAC system and scented the whole house. :)  I cut the anthers off the flowers shortly after they developed to keep pollen from spreading though. No one in our house has hay fever, but I figured it was still a good idea, especially if we had guests who did have allergies.  Cutting the anthers off didn't seem to hurt the plant any and the flowers lasted just as long as the websites said they would, about two weeks each.  They reminded me a bit of tiger lilies in form and texture.  Only these have shorter petals and a different structure to the anthers and pistil. 

By the time our winter was over in February, so was the blooming. When the last of the blooms broke down, I cut the flowering stalks off with a very sharp pair of shears cleaned with rubbing alcohol (always a good idea, especially with plants that you aren't sure how sensitive they are to infection yet).  It stayed in the house until my favorite weather service (Weatherunderground.com) stopped forecasting frost for our area.  Then, I moved it outside to the shadiest part of our yard that was also not too cold. At the time, that was the South side of the house up against the North facing wall.  By May, it was getting warm enough that it needed to move to a cooler spot, so I put it along the wall on the East side of the house where it is now.

Shortly after I moved it outside, even though I put it in the shadiest spots, it still lost most of its leaves.  I would have been concerned had I not learned that this is common for plants that are moved from inside to outside, especially ones that have finished their reproductive period.  I'm happy to report, that I've been pleasantly surprised at how well it has recovered and even thrived outdoors.  I wasn't sure if it would grow anything all summer, but it has.


 

Re-sprouting outdoors. This time, leaves are leading the way.

In this current photo (6/16/16) we have two wonderful leaves!

Interestingly enough, now that it is outdoors where it is drier and warmer, it is growing leaves first.  This picture was taken shortly after it started emerging its first new leaf.  They said that it was a very persistent perennial that can do this for years, but I wasn't sure if that would be the case in our climate. So far, so good as you can see by the current photo that I took this morning.  The plant gets watered twice a day by a soaker hose dripping down on it on a timer, so it doesn't get a lot of water at once, but the soil is being kept from drying out completely. It also has partial shade in the morning and full shade in the afternoon thanks to being under a bid shade tree and the branches I've laid on top of the shelves on this West facing wall that is on the East side of the house so that it gets shade cast on it in the afternoon. 

Natural shade from cut branches works well for partial shade.

Will the Amaryllis bloom again this winter? I have no idea, it's an experiment. Stay tuned!

 

Rescued Butterfly Bush Finds A Home

Butterfly Bush Buddleia davidii

This Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii) was rescued from the discount rack at a local big box store that we call 'The Orange Store'.  It came in a tiny, flimsy plastic pot barely big enough for the roots, but only cost $2. It was wilty and sad looking at the time, but we saw promise in it because it had the best formed trunk and branches; no obvious evidence of girdling roots and several flower buds. 

When we brought it home, we put it in a spot under a California fan palm sapling (that will be transplanted too someday) and on the East side of the house to protect it from being blasted by the hot, setting sun each afternoon.  We transplanted it into two nested pots filled with a soil-less potting medium high in pearlite to ensure drainage and watered it until water began to drip from the bottom of the pot (it was sitting on a stand so that the water could drain out) every day.  

After it quit wilting, about two weeks later, it started to flower. The flowers sure are pretty! We are looking forward to seeing how it looks when the plant can support full inflorescences of blossoms.

Butterfly bush blossoms

The pink blossoms contrast nicely with the opposite leaves of this plant which are dark green on top (adaxial surface) and covered with fine, silvery white hair-like wax on the bottom (abaxial surface).  It may continue to produce pink blooms, or the next set might be a darker red, even almost purple as these plants have some variety in blossom color.  The flowers are quite small as seen above and are rather simple, yet elegant, in design with one row of petals, each with serrated edges, fused into a tube with a deep center that hides the pistil and stamens. 

Butterflies and hummingbirds possess tongues long enough to access the sweet nectar that these flowers produce.  We hope that this bush will become a natural feeder for them so that we'll get to enjoy watching them flit around the yard.  Since we never spray pesticides in our yard, we think we stand a better than average chance of attracting them now with this bush.


Once the bush flowered for a while (another couple of weeks) and even began growing new leaves (a very hopeful sign that it might survive after all), we decided to transplant it again.  The weather was cooperating too with highs in the 80's forecasted the whole week and a 40% chance of rain.  Cool, rainy weather is ideal for transplanting many species in the desert. 

To give the plant the best chance of success, we carefully planned its new location.  A well placed and well dug hole is the key to success when it comes to transplanting out here.

The ideal spot was between this wall

And this planter

We paced 7 ft from the wall to give the bush room to grow

This is a good spot because it will get morning sun, but afternoon shade from the house and it is close enough to my makeshift drip irrigation set up (someday, I'll install a proper irrigation system) that I can set a drip on it if I'm gone for an extended period.  It is also in a fairly level spot which will make controlling runoff much easier than planting on a slope.

Butterfly bush can grow to be about 15 feet wide and 12 feet tall, so we wanted a location where it would have plenty of room to grow without getting in the way of anything.  As you may have noticed from other blog posts, we are not big fans of needless pruning.  Had we planted this bush closer to the sidewalk or wall, it would need pruned almost annually.  Where it will be, it won't be too close to any of the traffic paths, and may even cast a little shade over the planter box someday. 

 

"Weed Barrier" is in the way!

Weed Barrier is a myth. It doesn't prevent weeds for more than a couple of years after installation.

Fine gravel under the plastic?

When we started digging, we discovered to our dismay, that the previous owners of this property had fallen for the myth that putting a layer of black plastic under your rocks would prevent weeds.  Apparently, they placed it over the entire yard.  We'd already removed some of it around the trees shortly after we moved in.  This plastic is going to have to go away if we can hope for healthy root systems for our plants.  It's preventing gas exchange between the soil and the air and is impeding water infiltration.

Good soil under the rocks

The soil profile of our yard. Note the compacted layer on the surface.

Now that we've gotten the rocks and plastic and compacted soil out of the way (please oh please dear reader, never cover your yard with rocks no matter what your water district says!), we've found actual soil.  We're blessed to have chosen a location in the Las Vegas Valley that has loamy sand soil with fine gravel! This is primo soil for the Mojave Desert. Very good drainage and just barely enough clay and loam in it to help hold moisture and nutrients.  Other places in the valley aren't so lucky and have layers of caliche 'clay' which is actually coral that was pulverized and buried when the volcanoes that are now the Black Mountains to the South erupted, burying what was once a huge lake as big or bigger than the Great Salt Lake to the North of us.  Where I am digging used to be part of the shoreline around that lake and is a bit more like digging in a beach than a lake bottom.  This is perfect for many desert native and adapted plants, including our little Butterfly bush.

I know this soil well, so I know what its physical and chemical properties are.  If I wasn't sure, I'd do a couple of tests before deciding to plop a plant in here.  First, I'd get a little vinegar and drip it in a shallow hole.  If it fizzed a lot, I'd know that the soil was very alkaline and may not be the best material to use for a plant species that is not adapted to the desert (such as roses or violets). Then, I'd dig a small hole down to my planned root zone depth and fill it with water, noting the time that I did so.  I'd come back every 10 minutes or so to check the water depth.  If the hole still had standing water in it after 30 minutes, I'd consider planting somewhere else or build a raised bed if there were no other good locations for the plant.  Never plant anything (other than maybe plants from swamps or marshes) in a place with poor drainage. Your plants will never be healthy there. 


We dug the hole down just as deep as the flower pot was and about four times as wide to be sure to get as much plastic and rock out of the way as possible.

Luckily, the pot happens to be as deep as a spade is tall....

Makes measuring hole depth easy

People used to think that digging a really deep hole was key, but research has found that most trees and shrubs do not grow a really long tap root that winds up being as deep as the tree is tall. Only a very short list of trees actually do that, most of which aren't even grown in the U.S.  Actually, the key to tree stability is lateral roots. A wide fan of lateral roots extending out beyond the drip line of the mature tree canopy is what keeps trees from falling over.  That's why one spade deep is deep enough for this bush, but we made it as wide as we could. Someday, we'll probably come back and dig up even more of the rocks and plastic and move them out of the way as the bush gets bigger. 

Gently tapping the rootball out of the pot...

keeps the roots from being damaged

 

Placing the rootball in the hole, ensuring that potting soil is under and on all sides of it

Since the Butterfly bush was grown in soil-less potting media, we chose to keep that around the roots and to line the inside of the hole with it.  Our soil is pretty good by desert standards, but it's good to keep as much of the original soil around the roots to avoid breaking off any more root hairs (the tiny, almost invisible parts of roots that do all of the water and nutrient uptake) than we have to.  Eventually, the roots will grow out of the potting media and into the native soil, so we made sure to avoid compacting the bottom and sides of the hole, even raking at the surfaces with our fingers to make sure the spade didn't compact the soil too much.  Smooth, firm holes just become underground pots, preventing future root growth.

The native soil was gently placed around and on top of the rootball and gradually sloping away from the trunk, leaving a gap about a finger's width around the trunk to help prevent stem rot.

Bare soil was then covered with wood chip mulch out to what will soon be the dripline

Now that the plant was in the hole, we gently placed native soil around the sides of the potting media pile and over the top of it up to about a finger's width of the trunk.  Then, we covered that with a two to three inch thick layer of wood chip mulch also within a finger's width of the trunk.  That will help reduce the chance of stem rot that sometimes happens when soil and mulch are piled up around the trunk.  The mulch will help keep the soil moist and reduce soil erosion.  We used such a thick layer to help prevent weeds and to keep the mulch in place better than a light scattering would have.  As the bush gets bigger, we will move more rock and plastic away from it and add more mulch in its place. 

We then irrigated the plant with about a gallon of water and will water it about every other day to prevent wilting.  Thanks to the good drainage of this soil, that won't water-log the roots.  In heavier clay soil or in caliche, we would have to wait longer between waterings to avoid drowning the roots.  If the soil was really tight, we would have just built a tall planting box full of potting medium on top of the ground with a reservoir hole filled with gravel underneath it and planted the bush in that.  Once the bush is established, a deep watering once a week will be all it needs, even in summer.   

  Now, if all goes well, no guarantees when it comes to growing things, we'll have a lovely Butterfly bush to enjoy for years to come.