Hello, hippi growers,

I've been in lurkdom fro a while, but have enjoyed the information and photos here, as always.

With Massachusetts in an extraordinarily deep freeze, I've been thinking about the temperatures my Hippeastrum put up with various stages in their growth cycles. They do just fine here, but, for the past two years, I've had notably reduced pod maturation. Fertilized blooms set pods, but abort them after three to five weeks. This is not a ploidy issue, and it occurs with plants that have been good parents for me in the past. I realized today that I've been growing my plants in a much chillier environment for the past two winters. I wonder if there's a minimum temperature for pod maturation. Any thoughts on or experience with this?

As a kind-of side note, it's much less chilly in my house than usual these days; I turned the heat waaay up to avoid frozen pipes. Almost every hippi has shot out new buds and/or growth in the past 48 hours. Some were stalled - for weeks - but no longer! That's definitely a good, unexpected consequence of this weather.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you have on this topic,

Amanda