Nerine sarniensis

Mary Sue Ittner msittner@mcn.org
Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:49:05 PST
Hi all,

I have kept what Sir Peter said on the IBS forum about growing Nerine 
sarniensis. I have an old email address for him and I do not know if it is 
still correct. I will see if he is willing to let me repost it to the 
group. I'm happy to share it privately with anyone who emails me, but think 
I'd need his permission to add it to public archives. He had amazing 
success growing Nerines and when I was lucky enough to visit him in 
Switzerland we saw large dazzling photographs of the results in the entry 
to his house.

Jim Shields is correct in saying that he did not recommend fertilizing 
these plants and felt that fertilization, especially to promote flowering, 
could lead to losing the plant to virus. In the post I saved he said he did 
not fertilize his plants at all.

Having said that however, being part of various bulb lists for quite a few 
years now has convinced me that there are often many different ways to grow 
bulbs successfully. I have tried many methods others have suggested that 
didn't work for me, no doubt because I could not replicate those exact 
environmental conditions. And I suspect that people following my advice 
have had mixed results as well. I have been experimenting with Nerine 
sarniensis and paying attention to what did and didn't work for me. I'm not 
bold enough however to say that I am sure that I will be successful next 
year. Perhaps none of them will bloom at all. But it does seem that in my 
climate growing these in the green house year round has helped. They have 
more warmth in summer than they would outside in my mild summer climate 
with cool nights and are also protected from excessive winter rainfall that 
led to unattractive sickly leaves. Some water during dormancy helps too. I 
feed my plants only lightly.  Hopefully I can add some pictures to the wiki 
soon of my successful blooms this year from Zinkowski rescue bulbs.

Mary Sue


More information about the pbs mailing list