Recalcitrant kalanchoe

This plant was in flower when given to me but hasn’t flowered since, yet it grows really well. What can I do to make it flower? Am I feeding it too much? A Adams, Tauranga

This is a kalanchoe, Kalanchoe blossfeldiana,a succulent originally from Madagascar off the southeast of Africa, but now widely grown around the world as a garden plant for warm regions or indoors. They’re relatively easy-care plants and come in a wide range of flower colours, with plant breeders creating new and better hybrids for both indoor and outdoor situations. From a marketing point of view they’re like poinsettias and chrysanthemums in that their growth and flowering can be controlled so plants in flower are available allyear-round or for special occasions, such as Christmas or Mother’s Day. The trick to controlling kalanchoe flowering is knowing they are ‘short-day plants’ ‒ kalanchoe only develop flower buds after experiencing a minimum of six weeks of less than 10 hours of light a day. In the wild, short-day plants grow new shoots and leaves during the long days of spring and summer then, as day length gets shorter, initiate flower buds and flower in autumn. If your plant is in a room where you turn on lights at night then you’re effectively creating long-day conditions, preventing flower bud initiation. even a relatively short period of extra light at night can have that effect. So to get your kalanchoe to flower you need to expose it to natural day length only, away from the influence of extra artificial lighting. Or you could put a blackout over it every time you turn the lights on at night – which is what plant nurseries do to get them to flower out of season.