 Amaryllis reblooming is so easy, it's like one, two, buckle my shoe and boom, I've got a new bloom. Oh, yes or not. I mean, yeah, it all sounds really good in theory, but I tell you what, why don't we really talk about how you actually get your amaryllis to re-bloom? I'm trying to approach this from an average Joe's perspective. I mean, I've done tons of research on how to actually do this, but I'm not like some professional guarding expert or anything. So this is just from what I figured out just different things that have failed and other things that have succeeded and all the various research that's out there that says to do this or to do that. And believe me, a lot of it kind of contradicts itself or there's oftentimes you'll come across articles that says, do this, it doesn't tell you everything you need to know. And that's what's really important is we're going to try and cover some of those details that they often miss in a lot of the videos and articles I've seen so far. Personally, with my poor little amaryllis, I actually went through two full cycles before this guy got re-bloomed, which we have right now. Look at that bloom. I unfortunately had an accident with it. And my little amaryllis here had actually got all the way up to about right here. It was a super tall stalk. And unfortunately, I didn't have enough weight on the bottom. And so it tilted over and the stalk broke off. And now here's the result. I have him stuck in a cup and it's going to last half as long, unfortunately, which is really depressing. But that brings me to the first point of what you need to do to get your amaryllis to re-bloom. So it's like once it's actually got his stalk out there and it's growing, once you have a flower that's like this and it's starting to die, compared to the other ones, which are still looking good, you want to take it and just cut it back. So you want to go down here as far as you can and bam, it's gone. So once the bloom is actually completely finished and it's actually dead, so those last couple of ones have completely decided to wither away, you want to cut this stem here back to within one inch of the bulb. So if you're saying the bulb is right here or the actual bulb is officially down here, it's like I could probably go a little bit lower on this. But you want to take it down about as far as you can. Just really realistically, I can't really go any further than this here. So I've left a little bit less than an inch. So I could have gone down about that far and that's within an inch of the bulb right there. And these guys here though, you want to make sure you're not cutting into them. So when you cut, be very careful, you're not actually cutting into those guys at all. Otherwise, that's going to be trouble because you need these for the next stage. Why the leaves are so important is is this is one of the main ways that you help it to create a next set of bulbs is it needs the leaves to gather and store energy from the sun. So once the flowers are gone, you want to leave this out and get as much sun as you possibly can for the next probably like four to five months at least is what how long it takes. It usually takes so long that the my leaves get so big and kind of cover this whole window area where it lives. And my wife starts going cut the thing back, it's taking over the whole area. So so I mean, that's kind of what's going to happen is it's going to get so big and so scary with those leaves, hopefully, that you it's gathering tons and tons of energy from these leaves. Okay, that's what needs to happen. You have to have those leaves gathering as much sun as possible. If you're not getting much sun, then pull out a grow light and give it even more light because that is its gathering energy so it can produce a new bulb next time it has to have all that light. Now there's a couple different things about how you can start it indoors and then put it outdoors. Once it gets sunny in the summer and you're avoiding the frost, I'm not going to go into that too much because mine just lives inside the whole time right in this nice little window where it gets lots of light. So I don't worry about going inside and outside. I just put it right here and get it as much light as I can get it closer to the window. And like I said, I can put a grow light on it if I need to. Most anything that is an LED light can help. So the next thing is is how to feed it and not over water it. Now my trick that I always tell people is is you want it to get somewhat dry so when the soil feels dry, so if you stick your finger in it a little ways like this. So just like up to the first knuckle and feel if it's wet at all. If it is it can probably stand to last a little bit longer without watering. But you want to water it frequently because especially once the leaves get out there you're probably going to be watering it at least once a day. But before then it could be every other day or so. So like right now that's what I'm doing with him because his leaves are smaller. Her leaves, sorry this is Amy the Amaryllis. She only gets watered about once every other day because the leaves haven't grown out enough and it's not warm enough yet to really be gathering that much energy that the water is getting used up that fast. So you put your finger in there about up to the first knuckle and if it still feels moist at all it doesn't necessarily need to be watered again just yet. If anything you know air on the side of not going too heavy because that is one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they overwater their plants. So just be careful don't overwater okay. Once it's in this stage you do want to fertilize it and usually I say I go with it that you actually do it once every other week. You can do it once a month but I like doing it once every other week to keep make sure it's keeping a good amount of nutrients in there and there's a variety of different things people say you can just use a very standard one you can use a seaweed extract fish emulsion is a really good one for them so the type of feed there's a couple different kinds you can use but the main thing is is that once a month at the least if not once every other week and it really is just dependent on how much you want to give it and how well you can remember on making sure you are feeding it so you can need to make sure you're setting up a schedule and it's getting fed once a month to once every other week. So last and most definitely not least is the dormancy period and to me this is the most important time I'm not I can't stress this enough most important okay this is the period I think that doesn't get enough focus especially through most of the articles I've seen they tend to say like oh just let it go and go in a cold dark area preferably a basement it's about the 45 to 55 degree Fahrenheit range and I'm gonna put up the Celsius here because I can't think of it off the top of my head and you want it a nice dry location that's away from any lights for me I actually just put it in my coat closet which is generally cool and it's completely dark in there and I actually put it in the little box so it's definitely away from any light now the problem I had when trying to regrow this guy is once it gets to the dormancy period first thing you need to do actually is this um you need to cut all these leaves off so you need to cut them all the way back to about right here so going to about the same area where you cut back the stem to so you just couldn't it all the way back so there's nothing left but this now there's two theories about how you can store this guy one is you just take it exactly like this once you cut the leaves off and put this whole pot right in a box or somewhere away from light and you'll leave it just like this the other theory is is you take it out of the dirt and you leave it with just the bulb and I've heard theories that say both sides work I've only done it with it in the dirt okay so that's my side that's what I've done so far and here's what's happened with the mixed results okay the first couple of times that I did this and it didn't re bloom I did it exactly according to numbers of a couple articles that I read which said that you can only leave it in storage for about six to eight weeks okay and I did that and it failed okay twice so it's been like 18 months at least if not a year since this guy had last flowered because of these failures and now until I luckily got these guys to come out yay that isn't enough okay the six to eight weeks isn't necessarily enough part of its due to your climate part it's due to where you're keeping it and another part of it is just how much sun and stuff it got before it went into dormancy so I actually read a few articles that said it actually can go longer than six to eight weeks in fact it can go up to five months according to some articles five months yeah and so what I did is I actually went a little bit closer this time to four months four months yeah and it it got the flower to come back now I've read a recent article that just have actually kind of blew my mind like why didn't I think of this before is what you do is after about six weeks you just go in and look at it you go in and look and see if it's got a bloom started yet so if you can see the starts of a new bloom then it's like okay I can take it out no because you know it's gonna re bloom it already has one showing up I mean common sense right and if it doesn't you just put it back in storage for another week or two and then check it again and if it's still not there yet you leave it in storage for a little bit longer until you see one come out but like I said at the most you want to go five months so if one's not showing up at five months it means you probably just didn't give it enough light and get enough time on the leaves and stuff beforehand it could be any of the other factors we talked about before but the dormancy period is the most important you cut the leaves back you put it in storage to make sure that it's away from any light and it's in a nice cool place again the period is six weeks up to five months okay but start checking on it that's my new rule of what I'm gonna do with these guys is after six weeks I'm gonna check on it to see if it has a bloom showing up yet then if not I'm gonna leave it away again for another two weeks or so check it again and then if it's not I'm gonna leave it away again and check it again because this time when I've left it four months it actually had such a big bloom that I could have actually pulled it out of storage a little bit earlier I think and that's part of the reason that the stock got so huge that it ended up toppling over and breaking okay so this waiting too long can actually be a detriment too and you'll suffer the same fate I did and have a poor broken amaryllis okay and you don't want that either right because this means now my bloom is gonna be lasting half if not less as long as it would have been if it remained on the stock okay so that's just painful I mean especially after waiting 18 months to two years to see this guy again now I have to put him back in storage and hopefully not break a stem next time sorry so once you're actually ready to pull it out of storage here's what you do okay you want to take it and if it's already in some dirt what you're gonna do is you're gonna take it and you're gonna take the top layer of dirt out and put some new dirt in that's one way to do it that's all I did with this guy last time and it did re bloom perfectly fine the the other theory says that you actually just take all this dirt out and you repot it you just put it in a new pot and you make sure that this isn't sitting too low in the dirt you know a lot of people say that I probably could have left this a bit higher in the dirt that you don't want to go above this bulb down all the way down here so I could have went a little bit higher with this they say you definitely you can't actually leave this part of the bulb a little bit exposed okay but either way you're going to put some new dirt in there with it okay um whether it's the whole thing or just part of it where you take out this much dirt and you refill the rest either one is feasible okay both can work it's a matter of what you think you can do and what works for you all right all this stuff is variable and it's also depends on climate and different things so I mean don't be too scared about it and thinking oh I'm doing this wrong there's various ways you can get this to work okay but yep that's about it that's how to re bloom your amaryllis if you have any more questions please let me know in the comment section down below um a question for today is uh do you actually have an amaryllis I would assume so if you're watching this video please tell me all about it what color is yours mine's obviously this nice pink and white if you like this video it does me a big favor if you hit that like button subscribe of course and share it with your friends until next time be kind to each other and happy reblooming