justgardenthings
If you are like many gardeners out there, then a Christmas cactus must be one of your favorite plants. The lovely flowering cactus is one of the few cacti species that originate from the forest.
So, how can you make a Christmas cactus bloom? Well, the secret to getting your Christmas cactus to bloom is providing it with the right temperatures and amount of light.
Christmas cacti tend to flower in a cold and relatively dark environment. To initiate the production of flower buds, make sure you expose it to at least 16 hours of darkness and eight hours of light for at least six weeks.
Christmas cacti do well in bright, indirect light. Avoid exposing it to direct sunlight because the intense heat can easily cause sunburn to its leaf segments.
The trick to getting your Christmas cactus to bloom boils down to three critical things: light, temperature, and water. Typically, the bloom season for this plant comes during fall- in the last days of October and the early days of November.
To encourage blooms to form, you need to start limiting the amount of water your plant receives. The only thing you need to do is to keep the topsoil moist, not waterlogged.