False Christmas Cactus care?
Hey y'all. I'm going to pick the collectives' brain here, again. I get the general care for this, but I don't understand about the off season, throw it in darkness thing. I also see where people are saying to remove the buds during the off season for "explosive" flowering? Any pointers? I'm excited about the color - cyber pink. I bet it will look pretty once bloomed!
This is another gift from work. I think my coworkers know I like plants. Lol
This is another gift from work. I think my coworkers know I like plants. Lol
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They bloom at the start of winter usually, so putting them in the dark longer than usual has them think "oh ok, time to open up" And I think the science behind pinching buds is they won't take up energy the plant can now store, and when you DO let them bud they've got that much more to work with 😊 @DreamMachine @princesspitstop
@jkdykes Gorgeous! I can't wait to see what color Cyber Pink is either!! Holiday Cactus whether it be Thanksgiving or Christmas cactus are short day plants. They require cool temps and long nights, mimicking shorter days during the winter which is when they bloom naturally. I wanted mine to bloom during Thanksgiving so what I did was I counted back 6 weeks from Thanksgiving to come up with the date I needed to start light restriction which was near the beginning of October. In order to force bloom they need 12-14 hours of uninterrupted darkness. I would bring it inside at 6pm every night and I would hang it inside my closet with the door shut until 8am every morning. What that's doing is creating shorter days in order to trick the plant into thinking that it's time for it to bloom. It was also colder inside the house than it was outside and the cooler weather also lets the plant know that it should be blooming. Once the blooms appear stop the process. The plant will produce buds on its own just not near as many. This year is the first year of me trying it and it worked! I counted over 50 buds when last year I didn't have any.
