Hi everyone!

I just wanted to share the timelapse video I captured of my Epiphyllum oxypetalum blooming the other night. It was great to watch and filled the room with an intoxicating sweet fragrance, I loved it.

This is actually the second year I've owned this plant and last year it had about 6 blooms. This year it only produced two buds and one of them was ripped away by a squirrel!

Does anyone have any tips or tricks that I can try to encourage more blooms next season? I did repot it this spring so maybe that's why it didn't have as many blooms? It was very root bound in the previous pot and I moved it into a large basket style pot so the roots can get some air.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Thanks!

Love the video.

Could be the re-potting. Might depend on the difference in the size of the old and new pots.

Very nice!

Hard to know why a plant blooms more or less or at all. Probably a combination of many things, but things to look at are changes in light exposure, changes in watering schedule, or just a difference in how warm/hot/cold it got/was when throughout the year. I play this game with my Echinopsis hybrids every year trying to find the right combination of fertilization, location and what not to encourage flowering, most of the time I have noticed it is mostly having the right weather conditions at the right time.

Even if many of these plants do not really require a lot of fertilization the nurseries producing them often have them on a pretty serious set of feeding solutions to get them ready for being sold. Sometimes that leads to heavy flowering and the longer you have that plant in your possession without providing a similar kind of feeding regime can make them flower less or not at all for a while until it adjust to its new conditions. So if you got it at a nursery or big box store that could be a factor.

mcvansoest said:Very nice!

Hard to know why a plant blooms more or less or at all. Probably a combination of many things, but things to look at are changes in light exposure, changes in watering schedule, or just a difference in how warm/hot/cold it got/was when throughout the year. I play this game with my Echinopsis hybrids every year trying to find the right combination of fertilization, location and what not to encourage flowering, most of the time I have noticed it is mostly having the right weather conditions at the right time.

Even if many of these plants do not really require a lot of fertilization the nurseries producing them often have them on a pretty serious set of feeding solutions to get them ready for being sold. Sometimes that leads to heavy flowering and the longer you have that plant in your possession without providing a similar kind of feeding regime can make them flower less or not at all for a while until it adjust to its new conditions. So if you got it at a nursery or big box store that could be a factor.

Thank you so much for your help! I'm going to try upping the fertilizer next year, and it won't be repotted again for a couple years, so hopefully it will give me more blooms.

It's probably coincidental, but I had cacti bloom this year that hadn't before after fertilizing with fish emulsion (poop).

The subtext of this conversation seems to be that plants have a "reset" every year and you get to attempt the correct light/fertilizer/temperature conditions each year.

That is not strictly true. A plant which has been floriferous this summer is more likely to bloom well next summer, just because it is likely healthy to start with.

Of course the conditions you give it in the meantime matter, but they are not the only variables.

Not sure I see that subtext Jai, but I am sure that in theory you are absolutely right regarding the ones that are floriferous or not to begin with, and I see that in some of my Echinopsis plants, which year to year are reliable prolific flower producers. However, there are very many which are very healthy growers, where it is incredibly hard for me to predict year to year a) if they are going to flower at all, b) if they do how many/few flowers I get, and c) how many separate flowering events it will go through.

I think that is due to a combination of a lot of factors (genetics obviously also play a part, but the more flowers one year and less the next on the same plant suggests something environmental), the most important of which in my experience, rain and temperature, I have no control over as watering with unadulterated tap water is no replacement for rain and I have too many plants to acidify my tap water before I apply it. Other conditions like fertilization, sun exposure, which you can control do appear to also play into it, but it is harder for me to point to instances where making major changes has led to an unambiguous result, but it is certainly worth trying.

Also think that in habitat some species will bloom every year, and some species won't, even with good conditions. So when you get down to the XYZ filial generation in cultivation, those variables will likely swing more widely not only between species, but between individual plants, even if they have not been directly selected for.