Nerine not blooming was Overwintering Nerine bowdenii

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:48:37 PDT
For years I was unable to get Nerine bowdenii to bloom even though I 
had offsets from a friend of mine who lives locally who  bloomed hers 
successfully in the ground. In my dry summer garden I found they had 
not survived in the ground so I had planted them in pots. I decided 
it was time to give them to the BX but when I unpotted them I was 
surprised how big and healthy they looked. So remembering I had some 
Cyrtanthus hybrids that never bloomed until I potted up in a much 
bigger and deeper pot in which they bloomed well each year, I decided 
to rescue a few and try again with a bigger pot and send the rest on 
to the BX. Since then they have been blooming well.  So I potted up 
another pot of this species that was not blooming I had grown from 
seed and it is now blooming well also. When the bulbs I grew from 
seed started blooming however, I discovered they were all hybrids. 
Both pots bloom at different times which extends the blooming time. 
Other species of Nerine I grow in smaller pots bloom just fine. I 
can't say for sure that was the reason for the change since with 
bulbs they seem to have a mind of their own about blooming time.

My Nerine sarniensis cultivars rarely bloomed until I moved them to a 
greenhouse year round where they could be warmer in summer and 
sheltered from heavy rains in winter and started watering them in 
summer. Now most of them bloom.

Sometimes it is just a matter of trying to find what works in your 
environment and experimenting a little. Even so, the year to year 
changes in our environments also make a difference. In this dry year 
I'm enjoying Moraea elegans and it hasn't bloomed for years. I wasn't 
even sure I had it anymore. And the Oxalis obtusa has been 
spectacular, dazzling even, much better than in years when we had our 
normal wet winters when it usually blooms.

Since I grow a variety of bulbs it means that usually some of them 
are going to bloom when they others skip a year or two.

I just added to the wiki photos of the offspring of Moraea 'Zoe' grow 
from seed I saved from that cultivar. I'm afraid I got a little 
carried away but it's been fun looking at the slight differences in 
the flowers.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…
Something else having a wonderful long blooming season this year are 
all those "homoglads" I've gronw from seed (Gladiolus hybrids 
probably with G. tristis and G. huttonnii in their heritage.)

Mary Sue


Mary Sue Ittner
California's North Coast
Wet mild winters with occasional frost
Dry mild summers 




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