Anticipating when this will open

I bought this bulb in a kit from Home Depot for several reasons.  For one, I wanted something else to brighten the house during Christmas.  Well, I started too late for a Christmas bloom, so now I’ll settle for simply brightening the house during the winter doldrums…which is fine. The other reason I bought this is because my Grandaddy Hargett was enthralled with these plants and had perhaps several hundred blooming in his landscape in Jacksonville, Florida.  He had nearly every bloom iteration known at the time, and having just one of these is enough to remind me of his passion.

I have potted this thing and have kept it near a sunny window and kept it watered. It has done well.  This most common mistake most people make is not allowing enough light. This will cause the bloom stem to be spindly, or ‘etiolated’, to use a proper hort term. As the much-awaited blooms have developed,  I began to try to anticipate when they would open. I have included my oldest son Taylor in this speculation and it has become a friendly wager, of sorts. The winner gets nothing more than bragging rights.

Taylor is majoring in Environmental Horticulture at a nearby tech school.  As such I thought it would be a good exercise to try to anticipate when the amaryllis will open.  Why? Am I a hyper-competitive type that has to make a game out of everything? Hardly.

In the practice of landscape management, anticipating or predicting when nature will perform is an important skill to develop.  It’s really more ‘art’ than science. If I can predict when the bermudagrass will green up, or when the leaves will finally clean themselves from the trees  in the fall, I can plan my work, prioritize my purchases, and be prepared for any number of potential cultural challenges.

I’ll let you know who anticipates  the amaryllis best.

Post Script:  I claim victory!

As the massive buds began to swell, then split, and reveal their velvety petals, Taylor and I both began to fudge our prediction of when they would finally open. I must say that my estimation was a little closer, but then…it’s my blog, anyway.