More Amaryllis Blooms

You might recall that I bought 4 amaryllis bulbs from White Flower Farm a few months back in an amazing sale.  The 4 that I bought were Samba, Nymph, Aphrodite, and Dancing Queen.  I planted the bulbs a few weeks apart so that I could get continuous blooms.  It's Aphrodite's turn to show off.  And show off she does.  She has stunning double petals of white with a hint of pink.  I noticed that this bloom does not have a stigma or pollen, so I'm guessing that this is a hybrid.  So I won't be able to try to pollinate the flower to produce seeds.  I tried to pollinate the Samba flower, but it was a dismal failure.  It started to produce seed pods, and then it quickly failed and didn't produce true seed pods! It's much harder than it looks, I'm not sure what went wrong, I followed Mr. Brown Thumb's article to the T and put the pollen on the stigma, but I guess it has to be just right to produce the seed pods.

I did get a baby bulb off of one of the bulbs that White Flower Farm sent me, so that makes me super happy.  It's a nice consolation prize for not getting anything to germinate.  However... I accidentally forgot to write down which bulb this came from.  D'oh! 

I planted it and it quickly sprouted a leaf!

My Dancing Queen is shooting up a flower bud.  I can't wait until it opens to see what it looks like!  I can't remember so it will be a fun surprise.  The one downside of using rain water collected from rain barrels to water your plants, there are a lot of mushroom spores in the water.  Check out the soil in this pot, can you see the 3 little mushrooms growing in the soil?  This has been happening a lot, so I've been picking them off as I see them.

The Samba bulb, has been the most productive, it bloomed 3 buds.  Here is the 3rd bloom, it was so top heavy that I had to tie it to my garden table.  It really did put on a amazing display of flowers.  You can see in this photo the failed seed pods.  See it drooping on the left.  The entire stem just started to brown and die.  I really hoped to get seeds because this bulb was just spectacular.  Oh well, hopefully it will grow a baby bulb.  I hope!