ESTEVAN - An ambitious flower brought a lot of colour into one Estevan man's house this spring.
Bright-red amaryllis had George Kuchinka surprised when after having six gorgeous flowers, it spit out another arrow with six more blooms. While amaryllises are known to have up to three shoots out of one bulb with two to four flowers, most of the time they have just one arrow and six flowers are rare as well.
Kuchinka, who is a retired farmer, has been growing amaryllises for quite a few years now. It started with a couple of bulbs they bought from Judith Pierce, who used to sell them for the Huntington's Society of Canada in the 2010s. Ever since then Kuchinka has been taking good care of the bulbs, and now has six or seven of them, so he's been enjoying numerous beautiful red and orange flowers every winter.
He doesn't know if his plant would qualify for any kind of official record, but it definitely sets one in his household, as he's never seen so many flowers coming out of the same bulb. It was put in the pot on Jan. 20. On March 21, one arrow had six flowers and another one was coming to have six more by April 7. One bulb produced a total of 12 flowers, and Kuchinka said he's never had even six flowers out of one bulb before.
Every year Kuchinka puts the bulbs out in the garden around May, allowing the roots to get the nutrients from the soil and the foliage to enjoy the sun. When fall comes, just before frost, he pulls them out and lets them dry. Then he cuts off dry leaves, leaving about five centimetres of a stem, and plants the bulbs into flowerpots around December or January, using good garden soil with some peat moss in it.
And in March to April the plants start producing beautiful, bright and big bellflowers.
Sometimes when they are in the garden during summer, bulbs produce babies on the side. Kuchinka said he plants those separately to keep his amaryllis plantation growing.
"It takes probably three, four years before those little babies amount to anything to bloom," he said, adding that amaryllises are not as much of a hobby for him, but rather are something he does since, as a retired farmer, he needs to have something green in his life.
