My Christmas Cactus

I am back with my second blog post and I have some pictures of my red and white christmas cactus. I am pretty sure this plant is a Schlumbergera Truncata, which would actually make it a Thanksgiving cactus, but whatever, and if it ends up blooming at Thanksgiving this year I’ll be just as happy either way. This was the second plant I bought after starting my houseplants hobby, and I got this in November 2014.

This cactus did not do as well as I had hoped it would do. It is looking rather pitiful right now. When I first bought this, it had little flower buds all over it, and all but one of them fell off shortly after I brought it home from Lowe’s. It had one bloom that opened up and that was it. It was a pretty bloom though. Anyway I feel like this cactus has been through hell, mostly at my own fault, due to not really knowing how to care for it. I think maybe I moved it too much in the beginning which caused all of the blooms to fall off, and during the short time I’ve owned it, I have accidentally knocked two branches off of it….. oooops!

Here you can see pieces of the branches I put in tiny pots (little jello pudding cups) that I’m trying to root and make new plants with. They’ve been in those pots for several weeks and I’ve not noticed them doing much, except the one on the left has sprouted some little roots on it. I am hoping to see some new growth by spring.

I dug into my photo archive on my phone and found this photo taken on November 12th, 2014 of the one full bloom I got off of this plant before all the rest fell off. I think this color is one of the more common colors, although these plants come in many colors such as white, yellow, orange, and I think there is a purple one as well. These plants are absolutely beautiful when they are in bloom. I almost can’t wait until the next holiday season to see if this one will bloom again.

This last photo is to show what my christmas cactus looked like when I bought it on November 7th, 2014. Wasn’t it beautiful? It kind of makes me sad to see this picture and then look at how it looks now, but I know with some good care it can look good again over time, and if my baby plants start growing then that will be ok too. I’ll then, with any luck, have three of these awesome flowering cactus plants, and that will make me happy.

Hello World!

Hi, my name is David, and I live in a little town in Alabama called Beulah. This is my first blog post on my new blog dedicated to my houseplants hobby.

While I’ve made attempts at trying to grow plants at different times in my life, I didn’t get into it much until October 2014 when I bought a Shefflera Arboricola plant at Lowes. Then I joined a super huge group on facebook called The Plants Exchange, and my interest in houseplants grew more and more. NOw 3 months later I have 14 pots with plants in them. I guess you could say I’m sort of addicted to plants now, and I even have a small want list of more plants I want to add to my collection. I’m sure my want list will get bigger as I learn more about plants. Speaking of learning, I’ve got a long way to go I’m sure. While my collection of house plants is growing, I have to honestly say I really have no clue what I’m doing as far as plant care is concerned. I can say though, so far I’ve had good luck with the plants I own currently, with the exception of a couple of them.

I plan to use this blog as a photo blog to keep track of my plants growing progress, and post links to any useful information I find online about growing and collecting houseplants.

The photo above is one of my Shefflera Arboricola that I bought at Lowe’s on October 9th, 2014. It is 3 months old today and is the plant I am starting my new houseplants hobby with. So far it has been growing very well. I am proud of it, and having fun watching it grow.

Well that’s it for this first post. See ya in the next post.