How To Get The Best From Your Christmas Cactus
Blooming Christmas Cactus: Beautiful!
Soil: Does well in almost any good garden soil. Needs no feeding except when buds begin to set.
Water: Avoid overwatering. It needs to be gently pushed into dormancy at the beginning of November to ensure holiday blooms, allow the plant to dry out between light waterings during this time. Keep soil lightly moist during blooming.
Pests: Almost immune. Yellow leaves and flower buds dropping off may be caused by too much water.
Heat: Moderate to cool. Keep away from heat sources when trying to trigger it’s dormant period.
Light: In the Fall encourage bud development by placing it in a room where it will be in complete darkness at least 12 hours a night (up to 14 hours). When buds show, place in a location where it gets sun part of the day.
Propagation: Take cuttings in Spring, at place where aerial roots have come out. Let cuttings lie for a few days to callous over, then pot in ordinary soil.
Notes: Set pot outdoors in summer and forget about it. Bring it in before frost, withhold water for about six weeks, then begin to water about time to produce buds for holiday bloom.
Christmas cactus CAN be grown in water! I grew one that way for over 10 years on my west facing kitchen window sill. When I moved 3500 km interstate 7 years ago I couldn’t bring it with me and gave it to a neighbour. When I visited her earlier this year it was still growing AND flowering.
I removed the petal where the flower had died,and now,the new leaf is coming in in a red color. Have you experienced that?
Yes my ziger all went red. I put lots of liquid fertilizer on the pot and after a little while green shoots appeared and now it is almost back to normal. So keep trying. These plants are very hardy.
I left my plant outside in the summer and the rains almost drown it.
I put my house plants outside for the summer. When I went away for a week all of the plants survived fine except the Christmas cactus, the squirrels dumped it over and ate most of it, so beware if you have these rodents.
I have two of these cacti, one had pink flowers last year, one had white.
This year though, I had no flowers at all on either one
I’ve had two real problems with mine:
1) Spider Mites, I seriously thought succulents could not get those. I only noticed when it started dropping leaves and whole segments.
2) Too much sun caused the leaves to turn red and suffer. With proper lighting for the variety the leaves will be a gorgeous green.