Mary Sue, your Zoe hybrids are gorgeous. Karl Church Zone 9a On Mar 24, 2013 10:57 AM, "Mary Sue Ittner" <msittner@mcn.org> wrote: > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ >