Is Sugar Water Helpful for Christmas Cactus? Insights from a Grasp Gardener

Crops like poinsettias and Christmas cactus are quintessential vacation blooms, and although the latter is fairly straightforward to take care of year-round, getting it to develop its pink blooms once more every winter could be difficult.

May a easy at-home remedy like giving a Christmas cactus sugar water assist convey forth these flowers? (In any case, individuals efficiently use sugar water for vibrant lower flowers!) However in terms of watering a Christmas cactus, it is a completely different story. As a grasp gardener, listed below are my Christmas cactus ideas.

Ought to You Give Your Christmas Cactus Sugar Water?

No, it is not a good suggestion to provide a Christmas cactus sugar water—nor a Thanksgiving cactus or Easter cactus, for that matter. The candy resolution will not assist your plant and would possibly even kill it.

Need extra gardening ideas? Join our free gardening publication for our greatest rising ideas, troubleshooting hacks, and extra!

Why Sugar Water Will not Assist a Christmas Cactus

Sugar water would not assist a Christmas cactus bloom as a result of vegetation make their very own meals by means of photosynthesis: remodeling daylight, water, and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose, a sort of sugar. Including desk sugar into the combo would not “feed” potted vegetation; it may well really disrupt this stability.

An excessive amount of sugar may cause stickiness, mildew, or a fruit fly-infested mess.

As a result of Christmas cactus vegetation are delicate to day size and temperature, you may have to create and keep particular rising situations for a number of weeks for peak blooms round Christmastime. Slightly than sugar water, here is how one can care in your Christmas cactus and get the pink and crimson petals you are after.

7 Issues to Give Christmas Cacti As a substitute

• Average temperatures: Your plant will probably be extra prone to rebloom when stored in an area with temperatures persistently between 60 and 70° F, with nights between 50 and 60° F.
• Vibrant gentle: Throughout winter, a Christmas cactus ought to obtain vivid, oblique gentle throughout the day.
• A darkish interval: Beginning round October or November, for about six weeks, the Christmas cactus wants 13 to 14 hours of full darkness to set its flower buds. As a result of the nights are sometimes lengthy sufficient in winter, you possibly can maintain the plant in a room with home windows however no synthetic gentle. You too can use blackout curtains, a cardboard field, or a closet to regulate your lighting.
• Evenly moist soil: The soil in your Christmas cactus planter should not be dry or soggy. Be sure that the plant is not sitting in standing water in a drip tray or cache pot.
• Constant situations: Do your finest to maintain these situations as constant as potential. Publicity to even a brief interval of sunshine throughout the evening or temperatures under 50 or above 90° F may cause flower buds to drop. After buds kind, you possibly can transfer the plant to a brighter area with comparable temperatures.
• Strategic pinching: Gentle pruning also can assist a Christmas cactus flower in winter, and you do not even want shears. Along with your fingers, pinch again its flat stem segments, often called phylloclades, along with your fingers in early June to advertise branching. In late September, pinch again any immature segments which are lower than 1 inch lengthy. This can encourage bud formation on the longer, extra mature branches.
• Fertilizer in spring and summer time: Crops profit from month-to-month purposes of balanced liquid houseplant fertilizer diluted to half power beginning if you see new progress in late winter or early spring. Cease fertilizing in late summer time to encourage extra buds to kind in fall.