One has to plan for the future and though I do it all year round I started last year by snapping a few clippings off the mother plant which I had for a couple of decades now. What was usually (and so-called when I bought it) referred to as a Christmas Cactus now seems to bloom all year round but especially at holidays.
And about 12 years ago Leap Year became officially a holiday for the plant as it started to have buds the first week of February and was in full bloom by February 29th!The original plant only had pink blossoms but the past few years there have been white blooms mixed in with them!
I am adding ‘instructions’ as to how to propagate the cactus but I must admit I just snap them off, stick in the dirt in the pot and everything works out fine. Let’s see how the twins do by November 2021!!How to Propagate Christmas Cactus
A year ago today I posted basically the same picture but these are all new. Every morning I walk out of my bedroom (no light in there for flowers to bloom! LOL) into my living room, kitchen, bathroom and see blooms of Holiday Cactus, Begonias, Geraniums, white pepper blossoms if not actual peppers. Yellow Cuban plant blooms in the inside of the entrance of my front door.
When I have been out whether I come in through the front or back door I am hit with red, white, yellow and pink blooms.People compliment me on my ‘green thumb’ but I don’t have one. All I have is good lighting and, as I like to joke, I threaten them to bloom or I’ll see and they start popping up right away!
Sadly none of these flowers have an aroma or if they do not a strong one. Maybe in 2021 I’ll start looking for indoor Lilacs, Roses and other flowers that have an aroma and bloom indoors—any suggestions???
Until then I am going to start trimming the big mother Holiday Cactus plant, picture 2, and start growing more like the ‘baby’ I started last year–see pictures 1 and 4.I might, if they have them, in February/March, buy some of the bulbs that The Dollar Tree usually has for sale.
A couple of months ago I bought some seed envelopes from Dollar Tree as I do every year. 3 didn’t deliver so I had to get rid of them and now I have 4 growing but I don’t know what is happening! They are supposed to be either daisies or coneflowers and yet all I am getting are small blooms that look like the pepper plant blooms!! Only 1 plant (first picture on top left) seems to have a different leaf and no blooms!
Adding to that my pepper plants are now giving more than one pepper per plant!! Are the peppers taking over my apartment? Will I be turning green? (HERMIT!!! HELP!!!)
I am waiting to see what happens with all the plants by the end of this month. Meanwhile, I can still rely on my 15-year-old Cuban plant to give me a few blossoms every day!
Pick any month, week or day of the year and my Geraniums, Begonias and/or misnamed Christmas Cactus are in bloom! I look for the reasons and I really don’t have an answer. It is not the sun and the window they are in because some are in the east, a few in the north and a load in the south.
I thought it might be the temperature in the apartment which would explain, maybe, the Christmas Cactus blooming all year round as I do keep it cool–though some may call it cold! Still that doesn’t explain the blooming Geraniums and Begonias or the yellow blooms of the Cuban plant. It might explain the green peppers growing as they need temperatures between 60 & 90 greens, though it is never 90 degrees inside my apartment yet it could be the sun shining through.
The only problem I have are getting Poinsettias to bloom after they lose their red leaves (‘blossoms’). Every December I buy two of them and though they last all year they never get red bracts again but I will try again this year.
Meanwhile I will just enjoy the blooms I see every day inside my apartment! (If you look you will see a new pepper forming on the plant in the first picture.)
Over 10 decades ago I got a Christmas cactus in December that bloomed every year a week or two before Christmas. Then in 2008 it all of sudden bloomed for my Leap Year in February!! After that it seemed to bloom for all and any holidays from Christmas to Halloween, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving and, yes, in February!!
For a year or two it only bloomed once or twice a year and then in 2016 it once again bloomed two weeks before February 29th!
Since then there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason but it blooms at least 6 months out of the year. Last week when I was watering the plants and got to the ‘Christmas’ cactus I noticed buds and now there is a bloom with many more to come as there are buds all over the plant!
I don’t care when you come into my apartment–it can be any day, week, month or the past 10-11 years the same 6 plants have buds and/or blooms on them and not always the same colors. They can be pink, white, red, burgundy, orange or fuchsia and not always in the same pot!!
I love watching them go from a bud to a full bloom.
Over the years I have grown Romaine lettuce, peppers and all kinds of vegetables. In some instances, say like I was cutting a tomato, I would just take a few seeds and without thought would just push them into the earth in a flower pot and forget it. That’s what I did with some seeds at the beginning of January and today I have a full grown plant. I will just have to put them in their own pot, put a stake in, put it on the sill of my east window where they will get full sun and just wait for the flowers to come and then wait for the tomatoes!!
Over the years I have had plants of all sorts having luck with some and not with others. I, also, tried planting various fruits and veggies from seeds, nuts and the vegetable itself.
I have had success with avocados, Romaine lettuce, sweet potatoes, etc. I don’t know how many times I have planted seeds from peppers but most times nothing happened. This past summer I took some seeds from a few green and red peppers I was cooking with and though a few stems showed up here and there but it wasn’t until last month that flowers started to bloom. Nothing came of them and they were soon dropping off.
A week to ten days ago there were about 8 blossoms and I didn’t want to see them also die so I made a decision. I very seldom give any plants away but Luiz had just done new landscaping around his home so I decided to give them to him to plant in the ground and see if WE could get any peppers from them. (All I want is one!)
I don’t know when I fell in love with flowers and plants but I do remember as a youngster going to Miami Beach with my family and being in awe of all the wild Bird of Paradise plants and multi-colored flowers. There was also our summer home in New Jersey and I can still smell the peonies in front of the house.
I think, though, that I really got involved with all of it when Johnny and I lived together in Memphis. We had hanging plants all over the townhouse and he was constantly working in the backyard patio garden. I found myself bringing home plants.
It was when I moved to Gateway, here in Fort Lauderdale, that I really went all out after seeing how many residents made their own gardens outside of their ground floor apartments. I started buying all sorts of plants putting many outside on my walkway. Indoors I not only bought plants I would grow heads of lettuce, stalks of Romaine lettuce, green peppers or I would also break off a stick off the Hibiscus bush outside, stick it in a pot and watch it grow, put out buds and flower.
When we got new owners we also got new rules and no longer do you see any flowering bushes, trees, resident’s gardens or plants out on my walkway.
I do have 28 plants in my apartment from Geraniums to Begonias, Cuban plants, Aloe and Christmas cactus, a miniature pine tree and I just ‘buried’ some tomato seeds in a pot.
Nothing, yes nothing, makes me feel better than seeing flowers in bloom and if you ever want to get me to do something bring me flowers or a plant!
