refrigerate hardy Lycoris sprengeri seedling pots?

Lee Poulsen wpoulsen@pacbell.net
Mon, 06 Jan 2014 23:08:11 PST
Hi Gastil,

I grow L. sprengeri in Southern California and have bloomed them (although not in the past several years because I wasn't able to care for my collection as much as I should have due to frequent trips to South America--thankfully that project is over and my plants are recovering once again). Maybe this is one of those examples of success through ignorance, but I grow them in the standard 2-gallon or 5-gallon pots and they grow very well. However, for me they start leafing out in mid-autumn and grow throughout the winter and spring and then go dormant in late spring. Even my ones grown from seeds follow this pattern. Then they bloom in August while dormant. I just leave them out in the open in a sunny location all winter and spring and then put them under shade where they get watered often enough during the summer that the soil never dries out. I feed them in the fall with a time-release fertilizer, and that's about it. My original bulbs all came from Jim Waddick (from a several year period when he imported all kinds of amazing Lycoris species and crosses from China in big group order). I don't do any kind of refrigeration of them. I know Pasadena is cooler at night in the winter than Santa Barbara, but I originally was growing them in Alhambra which has milder winters, maybe as mild as Santa Barbara's and you can see photos of the flowers grown at that time in the PBS wiki. They really are strikingly colored.

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a
Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m

On Jan 5, 2014, at 8:49 AM, M. Gastil-Buhl <gastil.buhl@gmail.com> wrote:

> Should I refrigerate pots of L. sprengeri seedlings to simulate the  
> cold winter they expect?
> 
> Have others grown this species from seed in a mild climate without  
> artificial cold?
> 




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