Want More Flowers On Your Christmas Cactus Next Season? Do This One Thing In January

When caring for a Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera x buckleyi), it's important to familiarize yourself with its unusual demands and preferences. For instance, these plants love to be watered with coffee and need 12 to 14 hours of complete darkness each night for about eight weeks in the fall to bloom at Christmastime. Soon after your specimen is done flaunting its brightly colored flowers for the holidays, you should trim its foliage to increase the likelihood of another spectacular display next December. Trimming at this time tells your Christmas cactus to channel its energy into making blossoms rather than leaves. What's more, removing some of the foliage helps light reach further into the plant, stimulating bud formation. It also improves air circulation, reducing the risk of mold growth and pest infestations.

To get your Christmas cactus to listen to your request to prioritize flower production, prune its foliage no more than a month after its latest blossoming period has finished. Otherwise, it will have already started its next cycle of leaf growth. Start by excising dead or yellowing leaves, and then shorten pieces of foliage that have become overly long or unwieldy. This may be all the plant needs to encourage optimal flowering. Without regular pruning, some Christmas cactuses will grow segmented pieces of foliage that are more than 2 feet long! 

If your Christmas cactus is looking lopsided or unkempt after your first pass of pruning, you can keep trimming until you've removed up to ⅓ of its segmented pieces of foliage, which are known as cladodes. Resist the urge to lop off any more than this, though, which could harm your plant.

Make sure your pruning technique is up to snuff to support the health of your Christmas cactus. Though you can use a sharp, sterilized pair of scissors to snip spare cladodes off of your Christmas cactus in January, there's an even simpler way to remove excess foliage and urge the plant to focus on flowering. Unless you're dealing with tough old stems that need to be pruned with a cutting tool, just twist a pair of cladodes at the point where they meet. Do this gently until the two sections separate. After that, you can propagate new Christmas cactus plants from these cuttings. They're likely to sprout roots if you pop them into damp potting mix soon after removing them from the parent plant. Also, try pinching off the ends of the newest segments, which may prompt the plant to create buds at these spots.

As you're shortening the leaves of your Christmas cactus, remove any spent flowers, too, as this tells the cactus to send nutrients to areas of new growth. Plus, it will make your plant look tidier. Be sure to also get rid of any dust that has gathered on the leaves, which can impede its efforts to absorb water. When you're finished pruning, deadheading, and dusting, let your Christmas cactus rest for a few days and then spritz it with water to keep it happy and hydrated.