Sunday, October 19, 2008

Silent Sunday Succulents

Parden the photo quality.
An update on my Christmas Cacti.


Plant Number One:
(10 full blossoms, 6 nearly ready and dozens more on the way)

Plant Number Two:

(one so far)


:-)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first one is glorious in full bloom! I bet you are loving it. Maybe by the time it's done blooming the second one will be covered with blooms and the show will continue without a break?? I've never had a Christmas cactus before but my Mom has one and can't get it to bloom. Do you find it difficult??

Gail said...

Shady,

They are lovely flowers...once long before the cat who must eat plants moved in, this beauty resided here! It came into the house in full bloom and never bloomed after that...Is this a plant that needs dark or no water to bloom? I never was able to keep it long enough to find out!

Gail

Lisa at Greenbow said...

Your CC look good. Isn't it odd that one has so many blooms and buds and the other has only one?

Shady Gardener said...

Kathleen, All I do is fertilize a bit when the flowers are blooming. I keep them in bright light (but not direct), and water them when they're dry. In the summer, I put them in a shady spot on the front deck... they get a very little direct sunlight. (however my mother-in-law's plant would get direct sunlight!) They got rained on a lot, so they didn't dry out very much. They thrived out there and now the one is blooming. I think the key was taking it outdoors this summer.

Gail, CC are easy! My amaryllis plants are now in the dark corner of the basement storage room for 6 - 8 weeks (yea!) ha. That means I don't need to take care of it, except to cut off the dead leaves and replace the top couple of inches of soil. I'm playing with last year's poinsettia, too. It's Really in a dark corner. Tomorrow morning, at 8:00 a.m., I'll take it to a sunny window until 5:00 p.m., then it's back to the basement. This keeps up for a month. We'll see. (I just had to try it once!)

Lisa, it does seem odd - except I know that the light one always blooms before the red one. It used to be a "Thanksgiving cactus" and the red was "Christmas cactus." Now they just bloom when they want to. (Often twice during the Winter!!) ha.

Plants like these are often a mystery to me... but I thought I'd try to "go by the books" this year. :-)

Anonymous said...

What healthy, strapping specimens - love the white, especially! /Deb

Shady Gardener said...

Hi Deb, Isn't it pretty? There is just the slightest hint if pink in the blossoms, but it's definitely not "showy." :-)

flydragon said...

Love your cc. I have a red one and it is just starting to get tiny buds on it. I used to have one that I had to call easter cactus because it didn't want to bloom till then.

Shady Gardener said...

flydragon, If I have the good fortune I had last Winter, these will bloom again... at least once more! :-) I'll watch for yours!