Tips to look after your cacti and succulents
Look after flowering cacti and succulents and keep your dormant plants cool and dry
As some cacti and succulents enter their rest periods, others start to gain momentum. Remember to keep watering winter-blooming crassulas. My Crassula deceptor started flowering in October; C. tecta with its beautifully textured leaves will soon follow and other species are building up to flower in the new year.
Dioscorea elephantipes, or elephant’s foot, is putting on foliage after summer dormancy. Its flowers are rather insignificant, but it owes its popularity to the massive tuberous root or caudex it produces.
Some of my collection don’t know when to stop – Sedum hintonii from Mexico is flowering again, Mammillaria albicans fraileana for the third time and M. plumosa should soon produce pale yellow flowers almost hidden in its dense, feathery spines.
Aloe varieties ‘Snowflake’, ‘Christmas Carol’ and ‘Vito’ have attractive leaves in winter and may flower as well. And, of course, the Christmas cactus, Schlumbergera truncata is smothered in buds. However, avoid moving it around because buds can drop following an abrupt change of environment.
Dealing with dormancy
Stop watering plants heading into winter dormancy. Lithops don’t need watering again until this year’s leaves start shrivelling in late spring. Give echeverias an occasional drop of water. Most cacti and succulents are happy between 0-5C (32-41F), but 10C (50F) or even 15C (59F) is needed for overwintering Mammillaria nivosa, native to the West Indies; cacti from Brazil such as melocactus species; and Madagascan succulents.
Although some popular mammillarias occur at altitudes as high as 3,000m (9,842ft) in Mexico, it’s still best to overwinter them above freezing. The same goes for echinopsis, gymnocalycium and opuntia. Rebutias are an exception. Occurring at high altitudes they enjoy a cold, dry winter rest – even in a watertight cold frame.
For any plants showing signs of decline, dormancy is a good time to remove all their compost and replant in fresh.