Christmas Cactus Update #4

The time has arrived. After months and months of waiting and watching, it is finally time to prune the Christmas Cactus! It stopped blooming in mid April and I had to wait another month before pruning it. Here it is before the big process:

If you've been following the progress of this Christmas Cactus, you may remember that I've been wanting to prune this thing since February, and in an attempt to curb my impatience, I wrapped green twist ties on the branches that needed to go. Like this:

Then all I needed to do was to reach in and start cutting.

Now there are three important things to know when pruning Christmas cacti: 1) wait one month after it stops blooming (which we've discussed already), 2) never remove more than one-third the size of the plant at one time, and 3) always leave a whole segment - do not cut the segment you want to keep. If you look at the photo just above, you'll see that I'm making the cut at the top of the segment with the twist tie.

So, how does it look now? Here is the before:

And after:

We can once again work at the sink without being shoved by the cactus. Now the Christmas Cactus will simply be green until November or so when it starts blooming again.

Christmas Cactus - Update #3

It's official: the Christmas cactus has finally stopped blooming. Not that blooming is a bad thing - we have enjoyed over four months of flowers from roughly Thanksgiving to Easter. The reason for my excitement is I have been waiting (im)patiently for it to stop blooming so I can prune and re-pot it. But I still have to wait another month before I can do that, so more waiting. Just wanted to give a quick update.

Pruning and re-potting posts to come later!

Pruning here

Christmas Cactus - Update #2

If you remember from Update #1, our Christmas Cactus had a second flush of flowers.

Second set of flowers. Taken February 2, 2012.

Those have faded and been removed. At the time we could clearly see there were more buds forming, and most of them would go on to flower.

Third (!) set of flower buds forming. Taken February 2, 2012

I've been casually and randomly checking on the new flower buds and watching them slowly get bigger. This morning I found these:

  

A third set of flowers? Somewhere around a dozen. This thing just won't quit! I am (im)patiently waiting for it to stop blooming so that I can prune and repot it, which is supposed to happen one month after it has stopped blooming. At the rate this plant is going, I won't be able to do anything with it until May!

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(But I have finally figured out how to get the best angle to take pictures of this Christmas cactus, since it's hanging over the sink and pressed against the window. I have to sit on the counter, lean over the sink and hold the camera parallel with the window and hope I don't fall off the counter or into the sink.)

The things I do for the sake of a horticulture blog. :)

Christmas Cactus - Update #1

I've been keeping an eye on my Christmas cactus*. As I mentioned in a previous post about the cactus, it is in desperate need of a trim.

January 3, 2012
Near the end of the first flush of flowers.

February 2, 2012

As you can see most of the flowers are gone, but if you look closely at the branches by the window you can make out the pink of some new flowers. More on that a little later....

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Although the branches are still encroaching on the sink, I have to keep the pruning snips away until it is done blooming. Which is really hard because whenever I walk past it I fixate on what branches need to go. This was quickly becoming annoying - and potentially obsessive-compulsive. If only I could mark the branches where I need to cut? String would work. No, our cat Oliver

Oliver "hiding" in the cactus jungle to watch the birds.

loves string and would either pull the string off, pull parts of the cactus off while trying to get the string off, or possibly pull the whole plant down. Can't have that. Wait, I know! Twist ties! There is a whole jar of extra twist ties in a drawer, so I chose all the green ones, cut them in two and loosely folded them over the part of the branch where I will make the cut.

Sorry this is such a jumble. It was really hard to get a
decent photo of the places where I put the twist ties.

Perfect! Now I don't have to obsessively fumble through the plant trying to remember which branches I had decided to prune out the last time I obsessively fumbled through the plant. There is another part that I couldn't mark because it so thick and can hardly see what I'm doing. That area will have to be prune after I prune the marked branches.

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Now on to the flowers. The first flush of flowers were pinched off as they wilted, but there were still multiple buds on the plant. Would they bloom too, or just wither? 

Thankfully, they decided to bloom! It's tricky to see them and to get photos of them since they're against the window. The second flush isn't quite as showy as the first and a bit more scattered, but they are still a treat. Especially in February!

This cactus is very happy this year!

*This is actually my husband's Christmas cactus. It is a cutting from his Aunt Arlene's Christmas cactus. He potted up the cutting in 2002.

Seems to be Flourishing

Last week we were looking through my in-laws' copy of Cologne: The First 100 Years, the book commemorating Cologne's history from 1881 to 1981. (The topic that started this trip through history is explained in a future link here.) After we thoroughly exhausted that topic, I casually paged through the book, enjoying the time capsule of photographs. Then I was halted by this:

Left to Right: Giant Bank Fern, bank employees Clara Morhbacher Eiden and George Bell.
Bank customers John Roufs and Hubert Tellers.

Holy giant fern, Batman! Just look at that thing! It's enormous! I've never seen any fern (this one is most likely a Boston fern) that huge unless it was in a conservatory! It won't be long before you hear an odd, faint "Feed me!" coming from it and the fronds start raising like tentacles. Poor Clara seems a little uneasy being so near it, Mr. Bell is leaning away, John is putting on a brave front but is ready to run at the first sign of trouble, and even Hubert with his impressive mustache is leaving a wide berth.

While I was still agog over the monster Boston fern, I glanced up at the photo above it:

Left to Right: George Bell, Baby Bank Fern.

Do you see it? Up on top of the tellers' cage? That monstrous fern started out as that little, spindly scrap of a cutting. And how long do you suppose it took that scrap of a fern to become Monster Fern? Twenty? Thirty-five? The photo with the young fern was taken in 1914, the other in 1925. Only eleven years.

Another thing I got a kick out of was the caption:
"....The first picture was taken about 1914. We call your attention to the fern on top of the tellers cage. The second picture.....was taken in 1925. Business, as well as the fern, seems to be flourishing."

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For added fun, look for other comparisons between the photos, especially the calendars, other flower pots, signs. Keep an eye out for the spittoon!

photos courtesy of Cologne: The First 100 Years, page 102.

The Christmas Cactus

And now for something a bit more fun and colorful than my last post.....

I will share my Christmas Cactus with you!

This cactus is hanging out over the kitchen sink in an east-facing window. As you can see it has a tendency to take over said kitchen sink. That will be taken care of in another post (which will have a link when the other post actually exists).

I'm not really sure how old this cactus is. My husband got a cutting from a friend, which turned into this beast. It must be fairly old because it has several woody stems, and is heavy on one side causing the pot to be lop-sided in the macrame pot holder thingy. And a branch has decided to explore behind the decorative plate on the cabinet. You just never know where these things are going to go!

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But the thing Christmas cactuses.....no, wait... cacti are best known for are their flowers.

Our Christmas cactus blooms somewhat reliably around Christmas, although some years it's a Thanksgiving cactus (did you know there really is a Thanksgiving Cactus?!), and other years it's a New Year's cactus. But this year it's a true Christmas cactus.

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If you look back at the photo from the beginning of this post

you may notice that our cactus only blooms on one side of the plant - the side that's pressed up against the window. Christmas cacti (Schlumbergera x buckleyi) require short days and cool temps in order to bloom. The glass of the window is plenty cold and the days are definitely short in our Minnesota winters, but what about the other side of the plant? What's going on there?

If you remember, this guy is in the kitchen directly above the sink where hot water is used frequently. What you can't see in the picture is that immediately to the right of the cactus is the stove. Lots of heat coming off of that thing. On top of that, the kitchen has a very efficient vintage hot water radiator that is probably too big for the kitchen and puts out way too much heat for a room that already gets heated up regularly by the stove. Therefore, anywhere more than a foot away from the window is too hot for Christmas cactus flowers.

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Having all the flowers are on the far side of the plant is something of a bummer because we can't really see the flowers without sticking your head under the plant. We've tried turning the plant, but the branching is too irregular and woody so it doesn't fit against the window and around the cabinet the right way. We nearly broke it on one attempt. So I guess we have to get used to sitting in the sink to admire the flowers.

Taking pictures of our Christmas cactus is also rather tricky, and not only because of the uncomfortable positions you have to contort yourself into to even get to the flowers. There is also a very short window of time to take pictures without the rising sun blowing out every picture. I decided to play around with the manual settings on my point-and-shoot camera and got some good shots and some not-so-good shots. But one setting and a half-hearted attempt at aiming gave me an unexpected yet awesome result:

The Christmas Cactus light bulb!