The Easiest Way To Ensure You Get Blooms On Your Christmas Cactus

Christmas cacti make amazing gifts and decor for December holidays thanks to their blooms, which often arrive just in time for Christmas — hence the name. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for the special winter holiday to arrive ... only to find that your Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera x buckleyi) is still completely devoid of flowers. One of the most common reasons for this is improper amounts of lighting. Christmas cacti are short-day plants, meaning they don't produce flowers until they start receiving only around eight or 10 hours of light a day. If they are in a part of your house where they receive over 12 hours of light a day, they likely won't get the message to start creating blooms.

Luckily, there's an easy fix for this issue if you're growing a Christmas cactus. Simply move your plant to a room where it's unlikely to be exposed to excessive evening or nighttime lighting. But it's not just your indoor lights, like the reading light in your bedroom or a sconce in your living room, that can bring excessive light to your succulent plant. Street lights – and even the lights from passing cars outside your windows — could prevent it from flowering.

It's important to think ahead with your Christmas cactus. If you want to ensure that it blooms by the end of December, you should start providing it with consistently dark nighttime hours about six to eight weeks earlier. However, while your plant needs darkness during the evening and night, it's important that it still receives bright light during the day. You can accomplish this by finding a sunny south-facing window in a room where lights are rarely used in the evening or at night. Alternatively, you can use a grow light set to a timer. If there aren't any rooms in your home where your cactus will receive uninterrupted darkness during the night, you can put it in a closet for those hours. Just be sure to bring it back out and into the light every morning.

While providing your flowering cactus plant with the right lighting should go a long way towards giving you amazing blooms, there are a few additional steps you can take to get the best flowers possible. Temperature can impact flowering, so try to have your cactus in an area with a temperature between 55 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Additionally, pay attention to how often you water your Christmas cactus, and don't water it until the soil is dry.