My Christmas Cactus.. um Thanksgiving Cactus

Before

after

another

close up of flower

Here is my red one...before

today

another

and another

last one

These are beautiful! I am just now starting some cuttings. Do you have to do anything extraordinarily special to get the plants to bloom, or do they just bloom anyway at certain times of the year ....?

~TJ

Beuatiful cactus. I have a red one blooming now. My mom always had one when I was growing up. I had gotten huge, the main stemms got very woody and tough looking. Never saw a white one before. Thanks for posting pics.

taj

Timmijo, when the weather warms enough for me to put them outside I do. I put them in semi shady spot so they are not getting the direct sun at the hottest part of the day. I shoot for morning sun and dappled afternoon sun. I leave them outside until the temps start dipping in the upper 40's. I have read that they need the cool weather to bring on the buds. since I have started doing this, i get flowers every year now. I try to cut them back in early spring too so they don't get too long. That tends to cause some limbs to break. That is what I do.

pdoyle,
I have one similar to your white flowered, fushia tipped "Thanksgiving cactus."
When I bought it 3 years ago it was loaded with buds and bloomed shortly after I brought it
home. I kept it in an enclosed porch all summer and brought it in the house too early, before it had a chance to reach lows of 40 degrees. As a consequence it did not bloom until April after it had again been moved to the porch in March and stayed some time in the 40 degree temperature.
This year I left it on the porch (moderately heated, won't get under 40 until winter) until now and it is blooming well but the flowers are now clearly pink, not white, with the same deeper fushia line.
Any ideas why it is pink instead of white? Do you think the cooler temperatures it is growing in now has anything to do with it?

My white one:

My Yellow one: (looks more like peach in this photo)

Very pretty Schlumbergera (showing off) Holiday Cactus photos. I had 3 nice plants out in my shade house for the summer and were just showing tiny buds, when we got that unexpected hard freeze, and it killed them. A friend gave me a small one in a large pot (I'll just leave it for now) no buds, and she also gave me several long cuttings of another one, which I cut back to 4 to 5 joints. They haven't rooted yet. I had to have a blooming one so bought one at my grocery store, had really pretty very dark purply red buds, which opened to red. Here is the picture.

Donna

semper, I am no expert on this but i would guess and say that it reverted back to original color. Which seens to be that fuschia pink color for me. I have had the same thing happen to me with most of mine. I am excited about the white one still being white. This is the 3rd year in a row that I have gotten white blooms. I bought the red one last year as red, this year I got red again. I will wait to see what I get next year. I guess it's from the hybridizing, I dont know. I know you'd like to see the white blooms but it's still pretty isn't it? I will that my "pink" ones always bloom closer to Christmas or later than the "special" ones.

I adore Schlumbergera truncate, and I'm so glad you've called it the "Thanksgiving" rather than "Christmas" cactus. You can manipulate the bloom time by giving the plant long, brightly-lit days until a month or so before you want the buds to form. Kevin www.agardenforthehouse.com