Very few of the holiday plants at today’s superstores cost more than $15, and most are much less. As for quality, many large retailers are purchasing plants locally if possible. Local plants are often of higher quality due to the shorter stressful shipping time. An extra bonus is that buying them supports our local economy.
The cyclamen is marketed and sold this time of year primarily because most thrive on the cooler temperatures and drier humidity of late fall and winter. If your mother’s house is very hot and humid, you should look somewhere else for a flowering houseplant that would enjoy those conditions, but that might not be on the cheap side.
The cyclamen is marketed and sold this time of year primarily because most thrive on the cooler temperatures and drier humidity of late fall and winter. If your mother’s house is very hot and humid, you should look somewhere else for a flowering houseplant that would enjoy those conditions, but that might not be on the cheap side.
Cyclamen plants are fairly easy to merely keep alive, however if your goal is to recreate the beauty, bloom, or color again next year you will have varying degrees of challenge. Suffice it to say that most are enjoyed like Christmas trees, for one season and then composed.
Cyclamen are beautiful flowering tubers native to the Mediterranean region. Place them in or near a cool window in bright light, out of reach from any heat source, because they enjoy temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees. If suddenly placed in a very warm room, they are prone to drooping no amount of watering will correct. Over watering at this point will often kill the plant.
Enticing them into bloom a second year can be a challenge, but the foliage is pretty enough to live with if you want to try. While in bloom and growing, from autumn until late winter, keep them evenly moist, then gradually reduce watering and allow them to dry out between waterings. If a plant droops at this time due to lack of water, not excessive heat, plunge the pot into luke-warm water and it will revive quickly.
Enticing them into bloom a second year can be a challenge, but the foliage is pretty enough to live with if you want to try. While in bloom and growing, from autumn until late winter, keep them evenly moist, then gradually reduce watering and allow them to dry out between waterings. If a plant droops at this time due to lack of water, not excessive heat, plunge the pot into luke-warm water and it will revive quickly.
Continue keeping them on the dry side until late July or August when you can gradually begin to keep them moist again. This is also the time to repot them into a slightly bigger (no more than 1 inch larger) pot with fresh potting soil in anticipation of the growing and blooming season. Fertilize biweekly when flower buds begin to show. Cyclamen are propagated from seed that can be purchased mail order from many major seed catalogs.