Hi all, Mary Sue's recommendations to Jim McKenney to try summer growing Nerine is good advice. Many of them should be hardy outdoors in the ground for Jim. Start with Nerine bowdenii and N. undulata, Jim. Brent & Becky' should have both. I'll send a few bulbs of other summer Nerine species to Dell for the BX one of these days. NN. filifolia and krigei are pretty reliable bloomers in pots in mid-summer. My Nerine bowdenii "Koen's Hardy" are now in bloom, and the N. platypetala are still blooming too. All are of course inside the greenhouse now. Other forms of N. bowdenii have not started to bloom so far this year. The Haemanthus seem to have finished blooming for this season. About the only seed I am getting besides from H. albiflos are my hand-pollinated crosses, [coccineus X barkerae] and the reverse. Most Haemanthus bulbs have a tough time adjusting when uprooted and shipped. In July I received a batch of mature Haemanthus montanus bulbs from my friend Dawie in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He grows these in his own garden, and even though rootless and rigorously cleaned for shipping, they have turned out to be a strong batch of bulbs. The new roots are growing so vigorously on a couple of the bulbs that the bulbs are being pushed up out of the potting mix! I can't wait to see them bloom in future years. I'm very eager to try them in crosses with other cold-hardy (that's a very relative term, in this case!) species of Haemanthus. Besides amaryllids like Nerine and Haemanthus, I grow a few other winter-flowering bulbs in the greenhouse in winter. The problem here in central Indiana, in the hot and humid Midwest, is getting them through the summer alive. An old reliable pot plant is Moraea polystachya, which is in bloom right now. It looks like a cluster of light blue butterflies when in flower. It is somewhat of an opportunistic grower, so I tried setting its pot out on the deck in full sun (and rain) for the summer. It stayed stubbornly dormant all summer long (at least this time it did), then commenced to grow as soon as the weather cooled down a bit in September. A year ago, it bloomed through the summer out on the deck and then not at all over winter in the greenhouse. Although said not to produce offsets, I think one of mine have does offset. I'll have to repot and check that out when they next go dormant. Fall-blooming Narcissus species, like serotinus, viridiflorus, and a few others, do survive here in pots and even flower. The late-winter blooming species like assoanus, bulbocodium, fernandesii, henryquesii, rupicola, and calcicola, do not survive in pots in the cool greenhouse, let alone bloom. I had to move all of those species outdoors and plant them in the ground to see any flowers. N. calcicola and several forms of N. bulbocodium have done well outdoors in the ground. The cyclamen started blooming in pots outdoors in August, and continue now inside the greenhouse, where they are a real joy in autumn and winter. In the ground, C. hederifolium barely survives here, and the others I've tried don't survive at all. Alpine houses seem to be a no-go here in my climate. Impossible to keep cool in summer, and deep freezes in winter. This is sadly a limiting factor when we try to translate the recommendations of English garden books into our own gardens. Bulb frames have been suggested, to ward off the summer rains when trying to grow dry-summer bulbs here. I've not tried one, as I fear the heat will override the protection from moisture. Opening a bulb frame up enough to keep it somewhat cool would let in a lot of rain. Besides, I think our hot, humid summer nights are the worst culprits for growing those dry-summer bulbs here. If anyone in a similar climate has any suggestions for what I might try here in central Indiana, I'd be most grateful for them. Regards, Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) USDA cold zone 5 AHS heat zone 6 3 inches (75 mm) precipitation per month (more or less) ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA