Container Plants for the Holiday Season

I guess because it's the holiday season, I thought I would introduce some holiday plants into my patio. Every year when I lived in England I would buy a Christmas Cactus and, as usual, it would last about a week and then become kind of weak and buds that had managed to sprout would fall off. I have since read that this is because of the central heating in most homes in the winter in England. So now that I'm in San Diego, and I can keep the cactus outside on the patio, I decided to buy one and try that. I read that they need a well lit spot, but no direct sunlight and an ideal temperature of between 55 and 70 degrees. Well, that is just about ideal San Diego weather, so I figured this was a no brainer.



So, as you can see from the picture above, I bought a beautiful pink cactus and hung it proudly on the patio. Every morning the hummingbirds would stop by and check it out, and it looked great. Not only was it covered in flowers, it was also covered in tiny buds. OK, problem number one - about a week after I bought the plant in early November, we had a period of Santa Ana weather. This meant that the daytime temperature, even by the beach, reached about 80 degrees with full sun shining down on my cactus, and the evenings seemed to take on that cold desert feeling. I am not sure what the night time temperature was, but I think it was too cold. I tried to remember to move the plant to a shady spot if I thought it was going to be really hot during the day, but I think I missed a few days. Problem number two - I had to go out of town for a few days, so I wasn't able to monitor progress very closely. Watering also seemed confusing in this weather - I read that the plant should be watered as a normal plant, not allowed to dry out, but not over-watered, and misted frequently. Well, that didn't happen. So when I returned most of the flowers and buds had fallen off, but the plant didn't look too unhappy. I watered it and hung it in its usual spot, but then we had a week of extremely cold weather (for San Diego) where the night time temperature dropped to below 40 degrees. So now I have the plant you see below, it seems healthy enough, but definitely has no further interest in flowering.



Fortunately, not all of my holiday plants failed. The other plants I tried - to get the red thing going - were, of course, poinsettias, which had also been difficult to grow in England. (Despite the fact that I've been in the States for over ten years, I am still mesmerized by the fact that during winter in San Diego you can wear flip flops to the mall without getting frost bite. So consequently, I still like the idea of putting what would be an indoor plant in England, outdoors in San Diego.)



I did not buy the poinsettias until the beginning of December, and we have not had any odd weather to date. No Santa Ana winds, El Nino rains, desert nights, just the usual morning fog, and everything seems OK so far.





The other plants I thought I would try were cyclamens which continue to puzzle me. I had them in the garden in the spring and they seemed fine and lasted for quite some time, but I bought two in the summer and both died within a week - I suppose it was too hot, as they didn't appear to have any diseases or pests. The two I have now are doing OK, but one seems stronger than the other, so we'll see what happens. The other plant I bought (because it matched the display I was planning) was a pink anthurium. This sounded very temperamental, needing an average warmth of 60 degrees (I am sure it's been more and less than that at times) and protection from summer sun, so I am OK on that. I'm not sure how long these plants will last, but with the way things go, I'll probably be the only one with poinsettias in July!