Christmas Cacti? You’re joking!

Christmas Cacti? You’re joking!

As I have not written a blog about these lovely little plants before I thought I’d do one today.

Pink & white one flowering on our living room table:

I have had one or two plants in flower for the last month – therefore the title of this blog!

Christmas Cactus with dying flowers in the living room

This was the very first plant to start flowering this autumn.

I got the original plants many years ago from leaf cutting, bits of the leaf pad that easily break off the main plant & will usually root very well & quite quickly when put into a little compost. These pieces I found in the flower & plants section of the supermarket were my wife works. Knowing how easily they root I collected up some leaves that would otherwise have ended up in the waste bin. That no longer happens any more as the plants always come in a protective plastic sleeve but 10 years ago or more they didn’t do that, at least not for the plants in the supermarket.

Christmas Cacti with buds in our kitchen:

As we live in a flat there isn’t all that much room for plants, at least not big plants but some small plants can be accommodated! These plants are very fragile so I keep them very small, they always grow in small square 2 & 1/2″ pots or sometimes in 3″ round pots. They are never transplanted, though they do get some tomato fertilizer in the summer, (in fact ALL my plants do, even the ones grown only for their leaves! It does them no harm), & they flourish on pure neglect!

Pink & white flowering on the living room table:

Pink & white & Red flowering on our living room table:

The red ones are in the middle but they don’t show up very well, besides they were mainly buds rather than open flowers.

Red Christmas Cactus that was flowering in March this year!:

They are actually a very dark red – usually that is! The light may have made it look more a dark pink rather than red! As I have two dripping with deep red flowers I’ll have to take a couple of photos & include them here.

Here are a trio of the promised photos:

They spend their lives, when not in flower, on the windowsill in our kitchen which is about 3m long & faces South west.

I also have a number of Easter Cacti that share the same place as well. I obtained them by the same method as the Christmas Cacti & they get the same treatment – that is “pure neglect”! They don’t mind either as they also flower every year & live in the same pots as the others.

Easter Cactus flowering in our living room window:

Here is a close up of an Easter Cactus flower:

Easter Cactus flowering on balcony during July!:

I fertilize them all with tomato feed during the summer & they give me this wonderful display in the autumn.

Edited to include a note on cultivation which I’ve condensed from the “RHS A-Z Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants”:

“They are plants from the tropical rain forests of Brazil where they live on trees & require very little soil, (that’s probably the reason they can exist for so long in tiny pots!) They need a high potash feed every 4 weeks while they are growing & moderate humidity in the air & in the soil. They should be grown in bright, indirect light. They should be repotted every 3-4 years in the spring.”