What kind of Amaryllis bulbs do you have? I have a jpg of an orange one with yellow throat. Johnsonii is the closest that I've come to being able to ID it. I'd be interested in trading to get a different bulb. When you write me back, I'll send you the jpg. Xtal

If you read the FAQ, you should have a better understanding of dormancy and the changes throughout the year. BUT, I am guess that you have the bulbs in 1 pot, so you can force dormancy by placing the pot on it's side in late August/early September so that you stop watering it. Let the leaves die back. When they are are brown and dry, cut them back to the neck of the bulb and .....ta da....dormancy. Great time to split the bulbs would probably be Oct/Nov...and the mother bulb should bloom again for you in the spring. Even the offsets will if they are big enough. K

I'm in the Northeast (US) too and I put most of my bulbs out for the summer right in their pots. I use carts that hold about 15 to 20 plants each which can be wheeled around if you want more or less sun. Being in carts, if we should have a prolonged period of rain I can wheel them into the garage for a few days so they won't rot from being too wet too long. I also have planted seedling bulbs in whiskey barrels and that works out well too. Not much seems to bother them in our neck of the woods and we have an abundance of squirrels and chipmunks. The chipmunks do like to "plant" things in some of the pots though but never actually bother the bulb itself. Just never use bone meal as that will attract everything, skunks included and then they will dig up your bulbs! If you only have 20 or so you can plant them right in the ground, they will love it and their roots will grow like wildfire. Only drawback is that you have to dig them up in fall and trim their roots and either let them go dormant for a period or replant them and assume that they will suffer a setback. I get the most growth in the bulbs themselves by planting directly in the ground but it's hard for me to get down on my knees which is why I love the whiskey barrels so much. Donna☺☺

I garden in Anchorage mid-Hillside (between Birch and Hillside). I planted a ton of bulbs from Brent and Beckys this year, and I sweated bullets all winter and breakup--especially when rivers of snowmelt were washing over the bulb spots. EVERYTHING came up, with the exception of one "mixed bag" of narcissus. I selected things labeled hardy to zone 3, so perhaps that was what worked? The "mixed bag" was a random collection, and I made the mistake of planting it in one of the coldest spots in the garden, so I think that was the reason they almost all rotted (I dug them up to diagnose). I planted blue and pink chionodoxa (the blue, in particular, was spectacular, and the first thing blooming), tulips of all sorts (some for cutting/nonperennial, perennial types in the regular beds), crocus, dwarf iris, and fragrant narcissus. Winston Churchill, in particular, was fabulous, as were the dwarf iris. A family member in Stuckagin says she always mulches then covers the mulch with visqueen (helps warm up the soil earlier in the spring), then takes it off. I mulched with grass and leaf clippings but didn't do the visqueen, and all worked well. The bulbs are planted in a high spot that gets lots of sun, and the spring runoff mostly goes around the beds. One more thing...I actually didn't plant at the recommended depth. I planted more shallowly, reasoning that our soil is so cold, and it stays so cold the deeper it is. I got away with it this year, since I mulched well and we had good snow cover. I might regret it in sparser snow years. Even parrot tulips were gorgeous this year with this technique (in June, of course!)