Dormancy: Letting your Amaryllis rest or go dormant is actually quite misleading. Although your plant will not be growing new leaves and photosynthesizing, it is hardly sleeping or resting. During this stage in it's life cycle, your Amaryllis bulb is like a caterpillar spinning a cocoon, in preparation for becoming a beautiful butterfly. In their natural habitats, these plants go dormant as they enter into the dry season. To conserve energy, the bulbs absorb what nutrients they can from their leaves, much like our own trees do in the fall. As the leaves dry up and the nutrients are absorbed, the plants prepare for the making of flowers. If  your plant received enough light, water and fertilizer over the summer growing season, it will have produced and stored enough sugar to make flowers for the spring season.  During this "rest" period, it will set to work producing the immature flower buds deep inside the bulb. The bulbs have to work hard and fast, because in only three to four months, it will be time to produce the show we've been waiting for all year. In the fall, stop watering your Amaryllis plants. This will encourage them to enter into their dormant portion of their life.  Once they've absorbed all the nutrients in the leaves and they are dried up, simply remove them from the bulbs. Leave the bulbs potted up in their pots and place them in a cool, dry location and forget them until next spring. A trick we have learned over the years is to lay the pot on it's side during it's winter rest. The bulb can actually tell which side is up by the gravitational pull of the earth! Being on their sides, the bulb detects that something is a-miss and tricks the bulb into producing flowers when normally it wouldn't or actually producing more flowers per bulb. Timing: After resuming new growth, it takes 6-8 weeks to flower. So, repotting time should be 8 weeks before you want your plant to flower. Bulbs are forced into dormancy in August for Christmas blooms. That's why bulbs we get at Christmas never bloom again during that time of the year. They would have to be forced into dormancy again every August. Amaryllis bulbs will naturally go dormant in the fall during the months of October and November. They begin growing again in the February or March and even into April. For continuous bloom from December to May, you can actually stagger the start of dormancy every two weeks from September to January. Amaryllis requires a minimum of 6 weeks of dormancy to produce flowers for the next growing season. To induce dormancy, withhold water and lay pot on it's side in a cool location. Bulbs will tolerate temperatures near freezing but only require temperatures in the low 50's to insure the development of flowers.