Our lovely Christmas Cacti is blooming, and after reading this wikiHow information about them, I realise it's all thanks to Charley.
She had a thing about nibbling the ends off all the leaves if we left her at home for any length of time with the other dogs. She would jump up onto the bench and then onto the table and give it a good nibble all around. It seems that by doing this after it had had it's more half-hearted than usual flowering at Christmas she has really invigorated it.
So Charley's nibbling and a couple of drinks of Baby Bio and we have a wonderfully blooming plant once again. For the first time ever it is getting two flower buds on the end of the of the leaves ....
... and in a couple of places it even has three !!
Not bad for a plant that is older than either of us. This was passed to us from Lovely Hubby's Mum and before it was hers it was her Mums, Lovely Hubby's Grannie.
It's a honour to have it here with us and it seems to be very much at home, and doing even better than usual thanks to a certain little nibbling Chug.
Blooming Marvelous :-)
Sue xx
I was excited to see your Christmas Cacti post...the plant looks beautiful, healthy and has flowers!! Probably 10 year ago my husband brought back a beautiful flowering one. Well, the flowers dropped and it has been flowerless from then on. Any tips!!!
ReplyDeleteGet a cat to nibble it, lol.
DeleteSee the wikiHow link that I've included in the post, that's how I found out that the puppy chewing the leaves actually helped our plant. You don't need a puppy .....you can just trim it yourself ;-)
DeleteBeautiful! I'm not joking but this is the only houseplant I can keep alive.
ReplyDeleteI forget to water it, never feed it and it continues to live. Turns out I'm doing the right thing. Minimal watering and not too much exposure to light!
Cats do the most amazing things...yours is spreading beauty.
ReplyDeleteThey do, but our cat Ginger, will not nibble at anything other than dried cat-food and live rabbits. YUK!!
DeleteI have a teeny tiny one of these on the windowsill. Can't wait to get it looking like yours one day!
ReplyDeleteX x
The nibbling reminded me of when I phoned a radio garden show to ask what to do to make our Saskatoon bush bush out more. The gardener said to pretend you are a deer and nibble (trim) all the ends off and it would bush out more and have more fruit! Unfortunately we didn't find out whether his advice would have worked as our (late) golden retriever, Ben, decided he really liked it and chewed the trunk completely in half-and that was the end of that!!! lol.
ReplyDeleteBlooming in Charley's memory, that's smashing.
ReplyDeleteJean
x
Ooooo! This is very pretty! My lady has several of these and they need the nibble treatment but she won't let me do it. Tee hee.
ReplyDeleteIve got one of these that was sold to me as an Easter cactus! Ive had it for about 5 years and its blossomed 2x. Reckon Ive got it in the right spot now. Apparently they like going outside in a sheltered spot in the Summer. Mines also the same lovely colour as yours. :o)
ReplyDeleteNice colour. I used to have one with big leaves and big red flowers. Can't remember what happened to it.
ReplyDeleteA lovely plant and a lovely heirloom, I have a Clivia which was my great aunt's. It's a good many decades old and flowers really well every year. Interesting about getting yours to bloom, I might try that with mine :)
ReplyDeleteI used to have one, but it NEVER EVER flowered at Christmas!!
ReplyDeleteThat is Charley, letting you know all is well !
ReplyDeleteMine flowered at Christmas and is over now. My younger daughter brought it home for me when she was about 13 and she is now 33 - so about 20 years old and still doing well. I will have to find a nibbler to have a go at mine to get double blooms then!
ReplyDelete