Hi C.J. and all, First and very important, where in the wide world are you and your friend growing your Hippeastrum? North America, Europe, South Africa? If in North America, in Florida or in Ontario? There is nothing obviously wrong with your friend's approach, but all the important details are missing. Your friend unpots and plants the bulbs in the ground when they go outdoors, right? How much sun do they get in spring? In summer? Do they get watered regularly while growing (spring and summer)? Do they get fertilizer at any point? Then digs them just before frost and brings them indoors, right? At what point does he repot them? How are they stored from bringing indoors until first watered? Commercial hybrid Hippeastrum (Dutch "amaryllis") should be well fed and watered. They do not have to go totally dormant and don't have to be kept dry for very long -- some say as little as a month. I give mine light shade outdoors in summer, after full south sun in late winter and spring while they are indoors. They stay in their pots, but I used to unpot them and line out in full sun in the garden from sometime in May until first frost. They often bloomed outdoors in about August, after having bloomed in their pots indoors in January or February. Rebloom the following February was, however, spotty. The ripe bulbs should already have their buds formed when he digs them in fall, so far as I can recall. Does anyone know different for sure? Best wishes, Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) At 06:36 PM 10/26/2007 -0700, you wrote: >Hello, Experts, > > I have been growing Amaryllis with no trouble, I bring them indoors at > the end of the Summer, they bloom, I let them grow until they go dormant, > I don't repot them until absolutely necessary and if I don't forget > they're in storage in the pot I am very pleased with results. > ......... > His Amaryllis NEVER bloom again. But they DO happen to shrink. They > get smaller every year because of this shrinking. > > At what point does an Amaryllis build its Bulb Flower? Is he > interrupting that stage over and over? rsvp ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA