If you want to grow alot of these you need to start them in open flats. Get some plastic trays from the five and dime. You are looking for something that would double as the bottom of a cat litter box. With about a 1/2 inch wood drill bit put about 12 holes in it. Six of them on the curve of the bottom to side. This is so if sitting flat it won't fill with water. I use a compost soil with a little sand and mix 50% with miracle grow soil or peters which is sold in our area. Fill about an inch from the top and water thoroughly. Add more soil if needed to keep an inch from the top. Lay out seeds flat with about the same space as the seeds are wide. Cover with 1/4 inch of soil mix. Mist top of soil until real wet. Set in semi bright light or on porch but not full sun. After they have had three or four leaves come out strong you can gradually introduce them to more sun. Don't worry about thinning out after they start sprouting. Leave in the tray and fertilize as required. Donts soak and don't let dry out. Leave them in tray for first year, then plant them out or in pots. You will end up with over 50+ a tray and are great for starting a whole bed with one tray. Hoped that helped you some it has worked for us for years. Warning; cats love to lay in these flats of young Amaryllis. Here is a link that might be useful: Town Square

Anecdotal advice is good. For me, other kinds of advice are good too, since I've had to grow in containers, and have had both failures and successes. I'd like know I will be questioning again next year. Four years ago, I got some great feedback on this thread. https://www.chowhound.com/post/peeling-garlic-week-planting-1041941 Specifically; "Glad to hear you got them back, but as for that fungus control advice, I have to say "hmm". While I've been growing plants one way or the other since I was a kid and have done a fair amount of (preferably technical) reading on plant diseases over the years, I'm certainly no "expert", but for whatever it's worth, honestly, it questionable to me, based on over-generalizations and to some extent, misunderstandings. Not harmful, but of questionable utility. To sart with, seaweed extract is great stuff, but has no fungicidal properties, and for that matter doesn't provide much if iany sort of "energy boost" either. It has very little in the way of simple carb content, which is the only source of "energy", other than sunlight, that growing green plants can utilize. (And beside, "energyy" is the last thing plant propagation material like garlic cloves need, since they bulk of the clove exists "for that every purpose" (so to speak).. If fresh, seaweed extract does however have useful amounts of (both growth and rooting) plant hormones. and a fair slew of useful micronutrients. As for the baking soda and rubbing alcohol, that's where I really start to wonder... Frankly, it sounds pretty dubious, but in this specific instance (with unsprouted garlic cloves), I don't think it'll hurt either, as long as you thoroughly rinse after the baking soda soak and don't let them soak in the alcohol for long. Large amounts of sodium are NOT something most plants even tolerate well, and while sodium bicarbonate does appear to have limited fungicidal properties, at least against some, particularly foliar, fungi but , one has to be very careful to balance the effective "dose" against the potential toxicity of the sodium, and it's certainly not something you'd want to ever water in to soil, rather than using it as a foliar spray in carefully controlled amounts to avoid an excess being taken up by plants' roots (in this case, of course, there aren't any roots to soak it up, which is why I don't think it'd be harmful). As for the alcohol. I really don't know anything about that as an antifungal agent. I've certainly never heard of it being particularly effective against fungi, nor widely used for that purpose (although it is a very common, if only moderately effective and potentially deleterious ingredient in homemade "bug spray"). it would certainly be harmful is allowed to soak long enough to really penetrate the cloves, and I'm really not sure just a few minutes will necessarily be effective against fungi, especially one that, at a brief glance, anyways, seems pretty tough like the one that causes white rot. Seriously speaking, I think you'd be much better off searching ag extension websites, or maybe doing web searches using the specific word "fungicide" as well as the scientific name of the white rot fungus (Sclerotium cepivorum) for the most up-to-date, effective treatments and preventatives. If the answer really were as simple as baking soda and rubbing alcohol, I don't think the world's garlic growers would have an impending pandemic on their hands..." Thanks Mike G! Couldn't find any double blinded studies but her are some other opinions supporting some form of prs-soaking. https://keeneorganics.com/garlic-fertilization-soak/ https://www.themarthablog.com/2017/11/planting-garlic-at-my-farm.html https://www.garlicana.com/resources-links/growing-instructions/ https://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/planting-and-growing-the-garlic.html https://www.groeat.com/soaking-garlic-before-planting There are some nice ideas from Pam Dawling, author of Sustainable Market Farming, in a link entitled "Organic Growers School › P.-...PDF Growing Great Garlic - Organic Growers School" but its a PDF and I can't seem to link it. This is part of it. Sustainable Market Farming Among other things, It says "Many of us do nothing special with the cloves before planting, but if you have pest and disease problems, use pre-plant soaking treatments, usually done the night before planting. Some growers find they get better yields from treated cloves even if no problem was obvious."

Patience is truly a virtue with Hippeastrum bulbs... however, you can help them along a little bit by painting some rooting hormone powder on the bottom of the bulb's basal plate, where the roots grow from. Bottom heat also promotes root growth... I use a heating pad that came with a seed starting kit. It is designed for plants, and fits under the flat that it came with. Other than those two suggestions, patience is all I can think of... these bulbs are sometimes slow to start, but once they get growing, they're wonderful plants! Good luck!

Beans sprout slowly and poorly at 60F soil temputature. They do ok at 65F but I may not get that here until it is too late to plant my longer season beans. To be able to plant on my usual June 1 date, all but runner beans need to be started indoors. I do grow a lot of transplants but there is not enough room for all that I would need. It is also possible to pre-sprout beans and I do that with all the beans to be planted on June 1 except for those grown as transplants. After much experimentation, it appears that soaking overnight for 8 hours will result in a lot of damaged seeds. Most beans are happy with a four soak in a jar with cheese cloth over the opening followed by rinsing and draining several times a day. Many will be sprouting after 36 hours. Those that are not are given a second 4 hour soak and roots will start to appear even during that soak. This works very well for most beans. The white seed Clem and Sarah's Big Bean will not tolerate a 4 hour soak and is best started in soil free seed starting or potting mix. The white seed Brita's Footlong does fine with a four hour soak followed by a 3 hour soak the next day. Other than growing transplants, the most reliable way I have found is to start beans in a similar way to that except that many beans are grown in a single pot or tray. A pot or tray of a soil free mix of peatmoss, vermiculite and perlite can be used to pre-sprout many beans and they will continue to grow in outdoors temperatures in which they would not germinate. One method of sterilizing or at least greatly reducing pathogens on bean seeds is to soak them in 3% hydrogen peroxide for 15 minutes. I plan to try that with some seed this year. - Dick