Veltheimia cultivation

[youngalistai]

my Veltheimia hasnt flowered this year this is the second year running after transferring it to slightly larger terricotta pot......i think ive done all the right things its in very sharp drained soil the bulb has a third of it showing ive fed it but only near flowering time ?............any thoughts on why my beloved Veltheimia wont flower

[Maggi Young]

Greetings youngalistai, good to have you join us.
There are several expereinced growers of this bulb in the Forum and I am sure they will be happy to share their advice.

[bulborum]

Do you have a picture from the potting mixture
and from the bulb size ??

Roland

[Ezeiza]

It may be dying of thirst. A very drained mix plus a clay pot means the plant has little to drink. The roots were not disturbed during the potting on, werent' they?

[PeterT]

It may be dying of thirst. A very drained mix plus a clay pot means the plant has little to drink. The roots were not disturbed during the potting on, werent' they?

I have to agree, they are lusty growers, but they don't apreciate a lot of water untill in full growth. Warm and soggy in dormancy is death to Veltheimia bracteata, as I found when I tried planting some out. Not very frost hardy either. I didn't bother experimenting with V capensis. I give it an altogether drier reigime. Grown from seed,  some years ago,that is perhaps why it is not yet flowering for me?

[jshields]

I occasionally try Veltheimia here, and my current pot of it just recently went dormant, here in mid-summer, after having grown all winter and spring.  So it depends on where you live as to what it should be doing at any given time.  Mine did bloom this past year, in late winter as far as I can recall now.  It does not always bloom every year.

Why a plant blooms or not is harder to say sometimes.  As Alberto suggests, I think a healthy, well-established root system is a primary requisite.  Then you have to feed it up to a fully vigorous condition.

I grow mine in a plastic pot in my usual gritty bulb mix.  It spends the cold weather inside the greenhouse; and even though right now dormant, it is nonetheless outdoors among a bunch of other pots at the moment.  However, I'm not at all sure that my care constitutes optimum culture for Veltheimia.

Jim

[Maggi Young]

changing the thread title to  'Veltheimia cultivation'

[santo2010]

I think that it would be better to determine which Veltheimia species is your's?
I am starting to grow them from seed, and I have read that they use to live and require different conditions.
I think that with a picture of the leaves it could be telled if it is a coastal Bracteata, or a desert Capensis. Asuming it is one of the more common two species.

[Ezeiza]

Capensis is far more difficult to maintain alive as it is an arid land species.Extremely well drained soil is a must.

Both are summer dormant although under certain conditions bracteata remains evergreen. The best specimens I have seen were grown in a mix one think suitable for hybrid Hippeastrums.

[PeterT]

Alistair,
are the leaves of your Veltheimia bright green or grey green/ bluish? where did you get it?
bracteata is the only one commonly available -the leaves are bright green and a little shiny, capensis has bluish leaves.

Alberto,
 no problem keeping V capensis alive so far, but I wish it would hurry up and flower - I sowed it in 2007. It is in a clay pot in 50/50 fine grit and loam. no water all summer. The bulbs are now about 2cm in diameter.

For both bracteata and capensis I break dormancy by putting the pots outside for a wet day in August, then they go back indoors. Watering the first time by hand seems to make them rot. They dont get any more water untill in full growth.

[Ezeiza]

Sounds sensible. Capensis bulbs remain dormant (looking quite dead) well into autumn. All of a sudden, they plump up, turn green and sprout. When THEY want it, and by that time hundreds of Cape species are already in leaf.